France: Thousands of Airbus workers strike and demonstrate in defence of jobs

The decision by the Airbus Company to slash 10,000 jobs is the high point of a broad offensive aimed at reducing the living standards of all European workers to the level of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The current developments at Airbus are not only of concern for the company’s workers and employees, but for all workers and young people in Europe, who are not prepared to accept a return to the social conditions that prevailed in the 1930s.

Events at Airbus highlight the fundamental problems that confront workers all over the world: the subordination of any long-term economic development to the short-term interest of a financial aristocracy geared to maximum rates of profit; the permanent attacks on living standards and jobs; the bankruptcy of the trade unions, which have no means for opposing these developments and which function as co-managers for the big concerns; and the pernicious role played by governments, which split workers along national lines—turning them against one another.

The defence of jobs and social gains, even the very possibility of technological and cultural progress, requires a fundamentally new political strategy. Trade union protest and pressure on the ruling elites will not suffice. Production must be removed from the control of the financial aristocracy and be placed at the service of society as a whole. The working class must break with its old, national organisations and unite on a European and worldwide basis to fight for a socialist reorganisation of society.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/air2-m08.shtml