International Labor Day is celebrated throughout the world on May 1, a day of vindictive struggle that comes in the midst of a crisis in the capitalist system and with a profound deterioration in working conditions that affect all workers in the world.
In Guatemala, the vast majority of workers lead an unbearable life, with long work hours and miserable pay, without rights or benefits, much less the basic recognition of their aspirations for a dignified life. Those people who cannot find work are immersed in a race of survival and adaptation, which neoliberalism, quite cynically, calls the workers who are victims of the market system “entrepreneurs”.
Neoliberalism has generated the destruction of class unionism, deteriorated labor rights and, above all, corrupted state unions, which certain leaders have used as a blackmail mechanism, accomplices with the cooptation of the state to allow corrupt state governance by business exploiters and corrupt politicians on duty.
The management of the Covid 19 pandemic allowed business elites to reduce wages, increase working hours, lay off without cost and increase underemployment and informal work, denying the right to health and further privatizing public services, while They made profits from that crisis.
For this reason, this May Day must mean a breaking point to manage a class alliance that allows us to face the challenge represented by the capitalist system as a whole and the criminal cooptation of the State by the organized crime mafias that currently They lead the Guatemalan state.
We must fight against colonial capitalism that imposes the destruction of natural resources, exploits migrants, destroys families and allows national looting.
It is important to generate the conditions to unite all workers, peasants, students, civil society to recover the initiative, stop exploitation and create conditions to achieve a dignified life, improving and expanding the labor conquests in favor of all the people.
The articulation of common struggle fronts in defense of public services, of universal quality education, with access to health, is essential to guarantee a popular victory.
