Workers of Europe! Fight for Our Way Out of the Crisis! Jobs for All: A Massive Public Works Program, Legalization for All, Socialization of Finance—Wipe out the Debts

Across Europe, and around the world, workers have begun to fight the layoffs, and the cuts in wages and living standards with mass protests and one-day general strikes. These are essential steps. But so long as the protest demands are limited to stopping the cuts, stopping the layoffs, they will fail to do more than slow the rate of decline. To stop and reverse the layoffs we have to formulate demands that say what we are FOR, not just what we are against, what our solution is to the crisis.

The capitalists’ plans have done nothing except funnel trillions from workers’ pockets to the capitalists, slashing consumption and driving the world economy into a deeper depression. The only way to create jobs and to end the unemployment crisis is to reverse this flow of wealth from capital to labor, to have governments directly hire millions of workers for a massive public works program to fulfill unmet social –to provide low-cost housing for all, free quality health care, and free higher education ,to improve mass transit, clean up the environment and to research and develop new cheap, clean sources of energy—financing this program by taxes on capitalist and corporate wealth. We mean here a truly massive program, employing tens of millions of workers across Europe to do the work that needs to be done.

Therefore the demand for a massive public works program, with direct government employment, at prevailing wages has to become a central demand of workers today. This is the way-the only way-to provide Jobs for All. Already in the United States some major organizations, including the California Federation of Labor, have begun to make this same demand.

But to build a united movement of all workers for Jobs for All, we must at the same time demand Legalization for ALL. In every country millions of immigrant workers who are among the most affected by the unemployment crisis can’t get government jobs because they have no papers. Their undocumented status allows employers to exploit them, pushing down wages and working conditions for ALL workers. To end this and to get jobs for ALL, we need legalization for all so that everyone in a country has the right to work there. This means immediate legalization without exception for the undocumented. We will not allow ourselves to be pitted against each other. To get power, we need unity of ALL workers.

The capitalists and their governments and parties say there is no money—that the money must go to pay the debts—to the capitalists banks and financial institutions. But the private financial system is bankrupt—it is kept afloat only through huge government bailouts. Private finance today operates only as a giant black hole soaking up money. Workers must demand the Socialization of Finance — state ownership of ALL finance, and running the state institutions democratically. This would wipe out the debts and free that money for social needs.

How We Can Win The way to win these demands is the way public works programs and other major concessions were won in the US, France and elsewhere in the 1930’s, in the last Great Depression—by a radical, ever-growing mass movement that threatens the power of the capitalists. A democratically organized, Europe-wide mass strike movement will strike fear into the hearts of those who really rule, fear for the existence of their rule of the few. Concessions from them and victories for us will follow from that fear.

The first step is to begin to unify workers and their organizations behind these demands. We call for the formation everywhere of Jobs For ALL Committees to organize around these demands and for workers to gain the endorsements of these demands by unions, immigrant and community organizations. An initial goal can be the integration of these demands into the planned September 29th General Strike.

Come to a meeting to discuss how we can organize around these demands, one of several taking place in European cities.