(Extracts from the speech in the inaugural session of triennial conference of Petroleum and Gas Workers’ Federation of India in Mumbai on 11.12.2009.)
I think we have to be careful when we talk about "crisis". Capitalism is not affected by a crisis which were external or separate from its economy. The crisis is not a malfunction of capitalism; the crisis is included in it. The financial crisis last year was not due to intemperance in speculation, or gluttony of some traders or some swindler like Madoff. If we think that it will be enough to "moralise" the capitalism, we make a mistake, already made in History. World circulations of capital, exigency of profitability, opacity exist since the beginning of the system. So if we leave the capitalism alive, other crisis will happen.
Secondly, access to energy is one of the most important point for the present, and for the future, from a geostrategic point of view. This point of energy access is more important when we consider, as the FNIC-CGT, my Federation, that Petroleum is not only energy, but first of all a raw material. Petroleum is the basis of an entire transformation industry: Chemistry, Plastics, Rubber, Drugs, etc.. And for us, burning in engines or energy plants this product, formed by the Nature by millions of years, is a waste, and aim only to satisfy profits run. The American obsession for security of petroleum supply caused the Iraq war and one million deaths. If you examine these points viz political choices for investment in deep refining, political choices for disinvesting oil public sectors, pipelines mapping, harbour development, bio fuels which are in competition with human food, and also technological mutations as electric car or the challenge of answering to energy needs in the twenty next years, the final question is the question of the role of business.
Will the value created by workers used to amass profits or to answer to people’s needs?
These two options, each excluding the other, fix the kind of world where we want to live. Do we want to live in a world where, twenty five years after the Bhopal disaster, for lack of security and safety investments, the Dow Chemical company, which assassinated and continues to assassinate thousands of people, dare to say that this private company gave enough for India’s development? The answer is definitely no.
In France, like here and like everywhere, workers live their job as a suffering. Seven hundred deaths a year, thousands of injuries, tens of suicides due to stress, workers in France live in deteriorating working conditions and fall of purchasing power. Pretexts are many. Yesterday it was for constructing liberal Europe ; Today, it is international crisis and competition ; Tomorrow, it will be for saving the planet that workers will continue to be exploited. We don't agree continuing this system. We have to fight it, by strike each time it is necessary, and replace it.
Lastly what should be our role as Union? Our task is to unify workers. Capitalist thought is hegemonic. International institutions, employers, most of governments, medias, even some unions organisations, in the international level or not, may say that capitalism is "natural", may say "there is no alternative", and that market economy is the only one possible. Our role is to prove that our demands can be satisfied, and for that, we have to make alternative proposals than liberal ones. Our role is to say to workers that another word is possible.
We have to tell the workers that the problem is not their colleagues, the other workers, the strangers, or the planet pollution. The problem, the first cause, is the system. As long as we choose to conserve the charge of feeding the big capital, the needs of human beings will not be satisfied.
Source: www.citucentre.org
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