A few days ago, on June 14, a “women’s strike” took place in Switzerland. This mobilization was directly related to the ITUC (the International Trade Union Confederation- a “tool” of the USA and the multinationals) event that followed on 17 June at the ILO titled “ILO in 21st Century”!

The main demands of the women’s strike were: “Investments in the care Sector, recognizing the unpaid work of women at home and in society, zero tolerance of racial violence …”

It is more than obvious that the overwhelming problems faced by working class women in all capitalist states, even in capitalist “paradises” such as Switzerland – which is a “paradise” for business groups but not for workers – they are neither highlighted nor fought with “gender” mobilizations with such orientations and content.

Organizations like the ETUC and the ITUC not only they do not express the real problems and the modern needs of men and women, but they use them to implement their plans in the line of compromise and subordination of the workers to the capitalists.

All of them, in the name of “equality”, call the working woman to accept the abolition of rights and conquests for the protection of maternity, and support of the social role of women. They tell women to accept that maternity is an obstacle to her “professional” life or a reason for dismissal, that she must work night and day in severe, unhealthy conditions, that flexible and part-time work combines professional with personal and family life, that she must retire at an older age. They call on her to “chase” women’s “entrepreneurship” and the “quota” of women’s participation in organizations that support and promote the cruel exploitation of the working class, which is the origin that generates the acute problems of workers, men and women, the inequality. They urge women to “submit” to the imperialist organizations, NATO, the EU, who are butchering the peoples.

For workers, women and men, there is only one path: To organize and strengthen the struggle on the basis of their modern needs. The strengthening of the class struggle within the unions, against the rottenness of the employer-government controlled unionism, which the ETUC and the ITUC express. Our path is the strengthening of the struggle of the working class in order to take in their hands all that belongs to us, everything we have created with our work, to break the chains of capitalist exploitation and thus conquers the real equity.

Women’s Secretariat of PAME