Basic Demands

Meetings the (management/boss?) of construction and the representatives of the One Union of Construction of the CNT of Seville, they agree: – the industrial day be established 36 hours weekly. (Collective agreement of construction, Seville, May 1936)

So much has been forgotten, so much has been left behind, that the general recommendations that we give next will be able to seem mental derangement. Our proposals do not leave in another place that the communal feeling and to carry them out does not depend more than to have will. In fact, in determined sectors already they have obtained some. What is absurd and criminal is to sustain a system based on the continuous growth, in consumption, competition, violence. The proposals of the CNT always involve leisure, security and life in harmony with the world, obtained step by step. We are suffering one of the biggest offensives of capitalism, that has intentions to transfer its production to places of the Third World, where they can exploit at their pleasure its people, pay them shit salaries, inflict upon them corporal punishment, days of work in delirious conditions and humilitations of every type. They want to go back to the start of the 19th Century. It is for this that we are helping so many closures of enterprises and manufacture of repressive laws. Our mission, is to raise the level of hostilities of the common people to these plans.

1. Linear increases. Salaries.

In the CNT they always ask for linear salary increases, whilst the increases that they agree in other union agreements are always percentages. What difference is there between one and the other?

The anarchosyndicalist union does not establish differences between the different types of work.. It is just as important to collect garbage as it is to work in a hospital:

Both provide essential services to the community. Sanitation cannot exist without the service of garbage collection.

Medicine is a more specialised field of work, which supposes that during a series of years the persons that exercise it have had to be maintained by the community, that is that has paid the buidings, faculties, laboratories, hospitals, etc. A person him or herself will not have sufficient funds in order to pay the studies. For this, one has a debt with society. Whilst the future medic studies, others of the same age collect shit. The CNT persues equality of salaries, the single salary, that leads in its last result will mean the disappearance of money. Until the day arrives that the torch of revolutionary justice puts this world upside down, in collective negotiation we always calculate linear increases.

Example

Imagine a clinic with 2 workers. Pepa who earns 200.000 psts gross and Rosa who earns 80,000 pts. Pepa earns 2.5 times more than Rosa.

[Llega] the negotation in agreement and following a percentage increase of 10%. Pepa, who earned 200,000 pts [pasa a percibir] passes to receive 220,000 pts and Rosa [pasa a] gets 88,000 pts.

The pay difference is now 132,0000pts. Pepa now earns 2.6 times more than Rosa.

If the negotiation was conducted in the anarcho syndicalist union, and had obtained a lineal increase, the accounts would be different.

First one will calculate the gross total salary of all the employees, that will mean 200,000 + 80,000 = 280,000 pts. This money is divided by the number of employees, which is two here, that works out to 140,000 pts. Now the 10% pay obtained in the negotiation is applied to the 140,000 pts, that is 14,000 pts average increase for the two affected persons. With this he or she who earns 200,000 is now 214,000 and the 80,000 is now 94,000 pts.

Now Pepa earns 2.2 times more than Rosa.

This means that the two employees have the same lineal increase of 14,000 pts, and that decreases the percentage difference between the two. With time the salaries will manage to equalise themselves.

With a pecentage increase of 10%, one earns 20,000 pts more a month, and other only 8,000 pts. The difference between the two are accentuated?.

This is only an example. They can solicit lineal increases calculated over higher salaries. (Lineal increases of 20,000 pts for all the catagories) and other methods. Or inversely proportional increases. The person that gets 80,000 they increase by 20,000 and to the 200,000 they increase 8,000. That each one chooses that he or she reckons more opporunte.

The CNT always solicits lineal increases. Fix and equal sums for all the categories. It persues the equality of pay. In the last result the disappearance of money and the wage system.

Above the pay there is that to obtain/secure that the increases are always relapse on the base pay and not on the accessories, as the base pay serves to calculate pensions and other benefits.

The minimum interprofesional salary (SMI) will be fixed at 95,000 pesatas, which will facilitate the disapperance of the accessories that they will add to base salary. The annual increases are always over IPC (CPI) and are obtained from the first day.

Pensions will be put on the same level as the gross pay of the last year of work and in no case for below the SMI..

Pharmaceutical and medical expenses will be covered without exception at 100%.

Tax will have to relapse on the beneficiaries of work. They will not be employed in any case in paying for military, religious, party or union expenses.

The politicians, parliamentarians, governors, royal family and public officials will not receive any remuneration for their supposed services. They will have to work and to justify their income and expenses. Ultimately to allow clearly that they are not the inceases of pay which that more (unknown) to us. Capitalism rapidly eliminates them raising prices and inflation.

2. Boycott extra hours and piecework.

A classic demand of the CNT is the abolition of extra hours and of piecework (to charge by the metre, area, kilo, box, task..) because:

They stop employment. The anarcho-syndicalist union wants to distribute the work, not that four do all of it. To distribute the major work to eliminate unemployment and shorter day. To do extra hours increases this.

Piecework and extrahours impede the obtaining of dignified pay. Which is about less work and more pay.

Extrahours and piecework cause increase in production and the beneficiaries of capitalism much more of which this rewards to the persons that are employed. They are a swindle even better than paid work.

The (overeffort?) and the tension that is involved, is translated in a major drain, appearance of illnesses, increase in industrial accidents and the cutting short of life.

We have to try preach with the example and never to do either extrahours or piecework. Between little work and money, the anarchosyndicalist union always elects little work and dignfied pay. The ultimate goal is the abolition of paid work.

3. Boycott to [la polivalencia – multiskilling?, desafectación - disaffectation], availability, mobility …

All these terms do not include other things such as increased production, better benefits for capital and more pressure in the field of work. We have to always oppose this with all the means at our (disposal?) to the (place) in march of all work plan that pretends to increase the output of the workplace. In these times of crisis, enterprises, that do not obtain the benefits of some years ago, raise their hands to heaven and swear and perjure that they will have to close down. In this sense whatever union demand is accused of intending to ruin the business and the message that is given is that the workers and enterprise are the same thing. But never, when there are great benefits, does capital distribute them between those that produce them.

Our message is that the problems of business are those for the capitalists, and if they want us to solve them, that the pick them up as they can, but not at our cost. And if they are can’t, that they give up, or that they commit suicide. That if they want benefits, that they invest in technology, in opening new markets or in that it is(?), but that they do not pretend to crush us more than which they already do.

Evidently our desire is that people are not pieces of a gear in which they decide to squeeze bellboys or determined nuts of a chain of production. But whilst enterprises do not belong to its true owner, that is the people, to be available, etc they will not have other significance that that of more work for less money. The explanations that apply to the hours and piecework is valid here.

4. Labour Day, Holidays, retirement and aspects related to worktime.

"El pueblo San está confinado en una zona muy poco productiva. El desierto del Kalahari en el que sobreviven, tiene poca pluviosidad y los años de sequía son abundantes. Los San se agrupan en número de entre 10 y 40 alrededor de un charco o poza en la temporada seca. Después de un día de caza y recolección, se juntan las provisiones y se reparten entre los miembros del grupo. Hay mucha relación de personas de diversos grupos y asiduas visitas entre campamentos. EI trato es amistoso y la gente viaja con frecuencia. Las zonas de caza-recolección no están acotadas y no son defendidas. Al tener buenas relaciones con los vecinos cada grupo tiene acceso a zonas muy grandes, lo que les permite sobrevivir en años de graves sequías. Los san consumían un 33% de carne y un 67% de vegetales, que les daban 2140 kilocalorías y 93 gramos de proteínas por día. La asignación diaria recomendada por el gobierno de los Estados Unidos es de 1975 kilocalorías y 60 gramos de proteína por día. Durante dos o tres días los san abandonan el campamento para buscar comida, y pasan cuatro o cinco días conversando, cantando, bailando, y en general, descansando.
Resulta que estas gentes llevan una vida sorprendentemente ociosa y longeva y poseen una dieta muy buena y diversa. Raramente hay en el campamento más comida que para dos o tres días, y no necesitan angustiarse por el mañana. La gente vive hasta una edad avanzada, con pocos síntomas de ansiedad o inseguridad. Wernard Campbell, Ecología Humana)

The San people are confined in a very little productive zone. The desert of the Kalahari in which they survive, has little ? and the years of ? are abundant. The San group themselves in numbers of between 10 and 40 ? of a ? or ? in a ? ?. Since a day of ? and ?, ? the provisions and ? between the members of the group. There are many relations of persons of different groups and ? ? between ?. The ? is ? and the people travel frequently. The zones of ?-? are not ? and are not defended. Having good relations with the ? each groups has access to the larger zones, which permit them to live in years of ? ?. The San consume 33% of meet and 57% vegetables, which ? 2140 kilocalories and 93 grams of protein a day. The ? recommended by the US government is 1975 kilocalories and 60 grams of protein a day. During two or three days the san abandon the ? in order to look for food, and spend four or four days, talking, singing, dancing and in general, ?.
It results? In these people ? a life ? ? and ? and ? a diet very well and diverse. Rarely there is in a camp more food than for 2 or 3 days, and they do not need to ? for tomorrow. The people live until a ? age, with little ? of ? or illhealth (Wernard Campbell, Human Ecology)

There are other ways of life that are very removed from that those imposed upon us, even though it is around a pond. The case of the San people, one of the few egalitarian peoples and without leadership that remain, exterminated for progress and confined to a desert is curious. With absolute certainty they work quite less than the workers of our industrial belts.

Since machines were invented economists know that do not make it is not necessary to work in the infernal workdays of nowadays. If this anacronism subsists, it must be of exclusive form to capitalism. Capitalism produces, not in order to meet the necessities of the people, but in order to obtain benefits. Capital interests itself a reduced number of people carrying out a task, instead of having more people working less time.

If the work day is reduced, it will make more employment, less unemployment, and less work. If now production sought to meet real necessities and made disappear useless and parasitical employment, bureaucracy, expenses in articles of luxury, elite industries, destructive armaments, etc in a world that suffers notable shortages of food, medicine, clothing, housing, drinkable water, hospitals, schools. The people will live much better than nowadays. If all worked in necessity, work would almost disappear and would change the character of torment that it has. But in order for that work has to allow to manage/run by criteria of [unknown – ganacia]. That brings us always to: The Revolution.

As basic demand, the CNT proposes a maximum working day of 35 hours weekly, 5 days a week at 7 hours. In those sectors that already enjoy this, we demand 30 hours a week. (The San people would consider this demand ridiculous).

On holidays, we demand an annual leave of 31 working days, without counting Saturdays or Sundays. In this way the days following of rest will be some 45.

Also one can go thinking in asking the sabatical year. One year of rest each 4 years.

Extra hours, piecework and moonlighting to be abolished.

Voluntary retirement at the age of 55 with 100% of salary.

Times for sandwiches, coffees and justified leave of work (workbreaks?) will be considered as work.

Women have the right to maternity leave from the first day, until the two years of the child if they wish, with 100% of salary independently of the time that they [hayan cotizado - receive?] social security. If the woman desires to incorporate work for some motive, the employer will provide her and will pay the services of nursery, until school age.

They must introduce in the agreements 6 days per year in order to be absent without necessity of justification. If they have already been obtained, to go for 10 days every year. Also 15 days per year justified for family reasons. Days per moving house, etc. The time dedicated to travel from home to work will be considered work day. Difficult, night and unhealthy work will have special compensation in rest and holidays.

There will be those who think that this is to ask for the sake of asking. We have to be clear that these demands are not of another world and are perfectly realisable as soon as we stop thinking in capitalist profitability and we think in social profitability.

5. Basic union rights

The unions and workers must control the quality of what they produce. The union label [label sindical] signifies the right of the union not to legitimate the product that is thought is harmful for society, the physical and mental health of peoples, the environmental means..

The agreements are negotiated directly by the unions and the assemblies of workers, despite work committees with executive power and union selctions. The union sections will have the right to collective negotiation, to convene assemblies and to freedom of movement, propaganda and affiliation within the workplace as minimum. It rejects on the part of the CNT the signature of agreements in solitary that is of limited efficacy or behind the backs of the decisions of the assemblies.

6. Unemployment

If our basic platform is carried out not only will unemployment disappear, but that until people will be missing.? [sino que hasta faltará gente]