The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) holds its Presidential Council meeting in Cyprus, in order to approve the action plan for 2023 to coordinate joint action and international class solidarity. The meeting is hosted by the Pancyprian Federation of Labour (PEO) on Friday and Saturday.
Addressing the meeting, General Secretary of WFTU, Pambis Kyritsis said that the Presidential Council, in this first regular session, will evaluate the action and presence of the Federation in the past year and will elaborate an Action Plan which will allow to further expand its role and its intervention between the workers and their Trade Unions.
International solidarity actions have a dominant position in the Action Plan, he said, noting that April will be a month of solidarity with the Palestinian people, while July will be used for an organised solidarity campaign with Cuba.
“It is our ambition to also organize a World Congress on the Democratic and Trade Union Freedoms of Workers, which have come under fire in a very targeted manner over the recent years”, he noted, adding that “at the same time, we will continue and intensify our demand for a more democratic way of functioning of the ILO which ensures representation and pluralism.”
Referring to the deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria he highlighted the immediate response of the WFTU affiliated organizations to the call for help. Regarding the train accident in Greece, he noted that it was not an accident “but a great crime, because it was something expected after the privatization, the underfunding and the under-staffing”.
PEO’s Secretary General, Sotiroula Charalambous, in her intervention said that world peace is constantly under threat from geopolitical games and imperialist interventions. “The Cypriot people, as a result of these policies, have remained violently divided for almost 50 years now due to the invasion and foreign military presence,” she noted.
Referencing the issues Cyprus workers face, she noted the undermining of collective agreements, the deregulation of work and the decline of the social state, “all led to an unprecedented shift of income from labour to capital.”
According to Charalambous “it is estimated that about 10% of Cyprus’ national income shifted from wages to profits in the last decade,” adding that “people’s income and living standards are further eroded due to high inflation, which in 2022 exceeded 8%”.
“PEO has been engaged in many important struggles, demanding substantial measures against high prices, the full reinstatement of automatic wage indexation, a decent minimum wage, guaranteed basic rights for all workers, protection and extension of collective labor agreements and improvement of social policies,” she noted.
President of WFTU, Mzwandile Makwayiba, in his opening remarks said that “we need to do more” for the working class. He expressed his solidarity with the working people of Turkey and Syria affected by the deadly earthquake, with the people in Greece affected by the train accident and with the people of Palestine. “This is the capitalism culture: in order to exist it must create conflicts”, he noted.
Source: Cyprus News Agency