Workers' Liberty

For the Organisation of the Working Youth
[from the JCR 2008 Congress second discussion bulletin – two of the comrades who drafted this submission are in Débat Militant, which is politically significant here]

For some years, conflicts have been multiplying in the world of work. Salaries, redundancies and conditions, which are worsening as profits are rising, are leading the bourgeoisie and the working class to an increasingly radical confrontation. In this renewal of workers' struggles, a new militant generation, increasingly independent of reformist organisations, is forming. Our tasks, as a revolutionary youth organisation, must be to arm this generation with the weapons of a Marxist analysis of society and of their own exploitation.

Building ourselves in the working class is fundamental for the present time and the times to come. Only a revolutionary party that is strongly implanted in the working class can help all the exploited to exercise their full power in social and political life in prusui of their interests. A New Anti-capitalist Party must occasion a quantitative and qualitative leap for our politics in unions and workplaces. Let us begin to elaborate and set it in motion straight away!

TWO BASIC PROPAGANDA ACTIVITIES: HANDING OUT THE YOUNG WORKERS BULLETIN AND SELLING "RED" IN CFAs AND FJTs
[FJT: Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs, a sort of youth hostel where young workers often live shortly after leaving home; CFA: Centre de Formation et Apprentissage, a work experience college, where young workers alternate between academic work on a vocational course and work experience in the industry they are studying. Young workers in a CFA are very badly exploited; they receive an inadequate EMA-style allowance but no real wage for their labour]
Among our regular political activities around young workers in the Parisian region, for the moment we only have our "Young Worker" bulletin which unfortunately only reaches a small number of CFAs and FJTs. In numerous branches this task is not carried out.

It is a communist political bulletin, which talks about national political questions and workers' struggle, at the same time as the perspectives of our current. But it also fulfils a para-union role: it is through appearing to be useful that we gain credibility.

This banal task of giving out the bulletin in front of CFAs and young workers' foyers must be taken seriously by all branches. It is a very important activity as it is only through the distribution of the young workers' bulletin that the young workers we are targeting can receive the analyses, the propositions and the politics of our current at regular intervals.

In good time, we must arm ourselves with local bulletins specific to each CFA where we have several contacts ready to help us with this task. We could thus introduce them to activism, by including in the bulletins "echoes" from the CFA which denounce concretely, by examples taken from the daily experience of young workers in the CFA, capitalist exploitation and the forms that this can take in their own place of work and study.

Another essential aspect of our political activity around young workers must be the distribution and sale of our monthly paper out front of the CFAs. Our paper discusses a variety of political topics each month. But in order to do this, the paper must itself be taken seriously by including stories and education pieces which emphasise what is going on in the world of work, in terms of class struggle but also in terms of attacks by the bourgeoisie against the working-class youth, and not just students. The stories and articles on the front page must also be aimed at young workers, and not just students. A caricatural example is the editorial of the last RED which said "us" in reference to students and called for unity with lycée students and young workers. This painted us as outsiders to those groups.

These are the two types of regular propaganda activity which could found a new identity, that or an organisation for all the youth, which is concerned to anchor itself in the world of work.

All circles must set themselves the goal of doing a CFA/FJT regularly. It is the strict minimum if we want to build ourselves even a little in these places.

A STRUCTURED POLITICAL INTERVENTION IN THE YOUTH IN TRADE UNIONS
The last few decades – decades of unemployment, of precarisation, of defeats for the working class – have also been decades of the flight of working-class youths from the trade unions. It is the duty of revolutionaries, with a view to rebuilding the workers' movement, to do everything possible to counteract this trend. Because unions are organs for the defence of workers, because it is in the interests of the whole world of work that the working youth regroups in unions, young revolutionaries build unions in their respective milieus. They must take part fully in union work involving the youth and be the initiators of this work where it does not exist, and aim to direct their work (struggle against precarity, building the CGT youth, investing in union work which treats ills that hit the youth, etc.)

Each wage-working activist must push his or herself to perform a minimum of union work in their workplace, including if he or she is a student (getting unionised, unionising their colleagues, convincing them to go on strike, participating in workplace meetings, etc.). This is particularly true for comrades who are classroom assistants, who will in any case be the first to take in hand the union work specific to assistants in lycées.

For the sake of efficiency, militants should naturally carry out their union work in accordance with the discipline of our political organisation, regardless of the posts they occupy. A CGT fraction has been set up in the Parisian region in this way and we must generalise this practice in all unions in which we operate.

The question of "flight from unions " is political. The policy of union leaderships does not chime with the expectations of a significant sector of the youth, who are willing to fight and who want to go all the way. Revolutionaries are therefore obliged to give a political voice to this battle, including within unions by constructing internal oppositions along class lines.

This task does not fall to the JCR alone. The union question being one of the most important for the workers' movement, it is possible that JCR members will participate fully in different organs of the LCR which deal with the political intervention of our current within trade unions. Participating in branch meetings of the LCR often necessary.

It is a long-winded work, but absolutely necessary if we want to build ourselves for the long term among young union members.

Building at the grassroots within our unions but at the same time promoting our politics at all levels including at the level of leadership... This work is now possible as the bureaucracy doesn't have a firm grip on what is happening within the unions, on the oppositional currents that are developing more and more and at all levels of the union, even within the leadership (the leaders of CGT Unemployed are still officially calling for banning all sackings/redundancies, despite the opposition of the leadership of the Confederation to this position). We want to become the leadership of the working class, even if we have no illusions in what it is possible to do within union structures.

THE NECESSITY, THE TASKS AND THE ROLE OF THE YOUNG WORKERS' COMMISSION
Since the last congress, the Young Workers' Commission of the Parisian region has been meeting regularly, every two weeks. Since almost a year, the militants who have been meeting there have been exchanging information on how they intervene in different struggles. In this way, the activists have been able to elaborate between themselves a JCR intervention in the network which has been set up between different workplace and neighbourhood activists, which is following the progress of the reforms to the work code. This has allowed the organisation to have a presence in the demonstration against unemployment and precarity on the 8th of December. We have been present at various meetings and events organised by their network, and our political presence has been noticed and welcomed.

In all sections of the JCR, the setting up of a young workers commission must be put on the agenda to provide a framework for serious activism.

A VISIBLE POLITICAL PRESENCE IN WORKING CLASS NEIGHBOURHOODS
We must examine the possibility, with comrades in the LCR, of beginning to intervene regularly in working class neighbourhoods, of organising a visible political presence there. If we want to implant ourselves there, we must recruit there. If we want to recruit there, we must first go there and provide a fixed point for those who wish to join us.

We could, for example, fix a working-class neighbourhood for as many of our branches as possible, in which they could intervene politically, sell our paper, distribute political tracts, set up meetings to make our political current known. We must generalise this activity and make it a permanent fixture of our routine, on a par with the HE para-student-union meetings. We must fix the goal of coming back regularly to the same neighbourhoods, as often as possible.

GIVING OURSELVES A LEADERSHIP WHICH RESEMBLES THE WHOLE YOUTH!
The leadership of our organisation is today characterised by a large majority of students. This is not natural because we have enough experienced young workers within our ranks who are capable of assuming responsibility in the different leadership committees of our organisation.

Nor is it natural that ever political orientation document coming out of the Bureau Nationale should establish a policy for universities and lycées but not always for young workers!

An effort must be made to educate and elect activists recruited from workplaces to our leadership. There must be an act of will on the part of our whole organisation.

An organisation which wants to anchor itself in the world of work must have within its leadership worker militants attached to its Young Workers work, which is indispensable to an implantation in the working class.

Regular leafleting, reform of our newspaper in favour of young workers, regular sales of our paper, political intervention in working-class neighbourhoods, proletarianisation of our leadership: here are the great axes around wihch we must work for the months to come in order to seriously build our organisation in the working youth.