Workers' Liberty

Heloisa Helena, the presidential candidate for the Party of Socialism and Freedom (P-Sol), got 6.8% of the vote - over 6.5 million people.

This is a fantastic result for the Brazilian left, indicating that the socialists expelled from the Workers Party (PT) have managed to regroup significant forces and establish themselves as a serious national force.

Brazil

The Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) candidate Lula da Silva was elected president in 2002 but without a majority in Congress. To gain support for the election and then in power, the PT formed alliances with other parties.

ARGENTINA

Last month a judged ordered that a public notice of ownership be posted at the ceramics Zanon factory in Argentina.

The notice would have allowed a venture capitalist or the previous owner to buy Zanon Ceramics for pennies.

Members of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) have occupied 12 farms in the state of Pernambuco, to try to pressure the government to speed up land reform. More than 5,000 families from the MST have moved on to the farms.

The Brazilian landless movement (MST) is to launch a series of mobilisations this year after criticising the failures of the Lula government.

MST leader João Pedro Stédile said that after two years of Lula’s government, agrarian reform continues at a snail’s pace, mainly because of the neo-liberal economic policies of the government

More than 8,000 Brazilian landless activists surrounded the central bank on Thursday 25 November and threatened a big fight over land next year unless they get more public money to speed up land reform.

Workers’ strikes across Brazil are winning wage rises after years of declining purchasing power.

More than 100,000 metalworkers in ABC, an industrial district in Sao Paulo where major steel, auto and other heavy industry is located, have begun to hold a series of stoppages in companies that refuse to agree to a 9.57% pay rise.

A new socialist party has been founded in Brazil, headed by militants expelled from the Workers' Party (PT). Below is an abridged translation announcing the formation of the party.


The Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (P-SOL) was founded at a conference in Brasília on 5 and 6 June attended by 750 representatives from 22 states. Its initial impulse was given by the parliamentarians Heloísa Helena, Babá, Luciana Genro and João Fontes, the radicals who opposed the leaders of the PT and their government serving national and international capital, the bankers and the landowners, whose measures attack the rights and interests of working people.

A new socialist party has been founded in Brazil, headed by militants expelled from the Workers' Party (PT). Below is an abridged translation announcing the formation of the party.

The Workers' Party (PT) in Brazil has taken the first steps towards expelling socialists within the party who oppose government reforms.

• India: 30 million strike

• Car workers strike in Brazil
• Repression of Chinese workers

India: 30 million strike

Thirty million workers in India went on 24-hour strike last week to protest over a Supreme Court ruling that said government employees had no right to strike because it inconvenienced citizens and cost the state money.

By Pablo Velasco

• Brazilian left calls for a new party

• Indonesian left starts election campaign
• Anti-union laws in Argentina

Brazilian left calls for a new party

Brazilian socialists led by Heloísa Helena, the senator expelled from the PT (Workers' Party) for opposing the Lula government's pension cutbacks, have launched a new party.

by Pablo Velasco

• Oscar Olivera wins case
• Urgent appeal for Chinese workers' leaders
• P Diddy uses sweatshops
• Brazilian car workers walk out
• Korean workers' demonstrations
• Colombian Coca Cola worker visit

By Harry Glass

The Brazil Network and the Latin America Bureau hosted a public meeting on the Brazilian landless workers' movement (MST) on 19 October in London.

• South Korea: a summer of discontent

• Free Brazilian landless workers!
• General strike in Chile
• Support locked-out Indonesian workers
• Protests at WTO Cancun, Mexico

• People's United Opposition Party launched in Indonesia

• Guatemalaen maquila workers' victory
• Victory in the Hyundai strike
• Sri Lankan trade unionists under attack
• Yao Fuxin and Xio Yunliang moved to labour camp
• Brazil pension reform sparks workers protest

• French strikes over: we'll be back

• 50th anniversary of East German uprising
• Strike wave in South Korea tests the new president
• Zimbabwe extends strike bans
• Demonstration against Lula's government
• Cambodian police kill demonstrators
• No jobs for sacked Venezuelan oil workers
• Celebrate 100 years of the car industry?
• ICFTU figures for deaths of trade unionists

by Pablo Velasco

• Peruvian unions defy state of emergency

• Zimbabwe opposition strikes
• Lula gets backing from right
• Class struggle in Israel
• Indonesian socialists to contest elections

The Workers' Party (PT) in Brazil has taken the first steps towards expelling socialists within the party who oppose government reforms. The move comes as Lula da Silva's government seeks to push through changes to the tax and pension system - slashing the pensions and other benefits for civil servants.

by Pablo Velasco

Last week metalworkers went on indefinite strike at a General Motors (GM) plant and a Renault car factory in Brazil.

by Paul Hampton

More than 100 people attended a conference about Brazil at the School of Oriental and African Studies on Saturday 8 March. It was called because of the interest in Brazil following the victory of Lula, the Workers' Party candidate, in a Presidential election last year.

The Workers' Party in power

Swiss socialist Charles-Andre Udry, in an article from late December 2002, looks at the prospects for the Lula government

Paul Hampton looks at the history of the Workers' Party and the prospects for the future in the light of Sue Branford and Bernardo Kucinski's new book, Politics Transformed: Lula and the Workers' Party in Brazil

Leftie football pundits reckon that defeats on the pitch lead to a good kicking for those in power.
Brazil's neoliberal president Fernando Henriquez Cardoso was hoping Brazil's World Cup glory might give his right-wing coalition a leg up in the forthcoming presidential elections. But all recent polls show Luis Inacio da Silva (Lula) the Workers' Party candidate as clear favourite.