Belgium: workers mobilise against bourgeois austerity plans

Once again, "Enough is enough" was the undertone for the days of action that took place in Brussels on 13 December 2024 and 13 January 2025 against the 'austerity plans' that are on the negotiating table in the talks about forming a new federal government, which have been dragging on for six months now. Earlier these plans  were revealed through media 'leaks'; today they are no longer a public secret. The unions speak of the "most drastic measures of the past 80 years". The planned attacks would affect all sections of the working class. While workers in private companies will be laid off en masse (27,000 by 2024) and automatic wage indexation will come under attack, the new national government also wants to axe social security spending, including unemployment benefits and pensions. To crown it all, it wants to implement a two per cent downsizing of the total public workforce and make work even more precarious and flexible for all workers.

During that first day of action, with some 10,000 demonstrators, it was mainly trade union delegates who mobilised (and mainly from the Walloon region), this scenario took on a very different dynamic on 14 January. Instead of the 5,000 to 10,000 demonstrators originally envisaged by the unions, more than 30,000 workers from the various regions of the country and from a growing number of sectors eventually turned out for the demonstration. But also 47,000 teachers in the Flemish region went on strike, which was a historically high number. Work stoppages also took place at the railway, public transport, recycling, postal services and many other public services. A new day of action was announced for 13 February, now under the slogan “for public services and purchasing power”.

But even before these two days of action, another rally had taken place in November that also mobilised far more workers than anticipated. At that health and welfare workers' demonstration on 7 November, the turnout was also three times higher than expected: more than 30,000 workers. In addition, on 26 November there was also a widely supported strike by French-speaking education personnel (Wallonia and Brussels region) against what Roland Lahaya, the secretary-general of the Walloon education union CSC-Enseignement called "a declaration of war". Under the slogan "teaching yes, bleeding no!", the strikers first and foremost rejected the announced cut in education by the already appointed Walloon government, a measure that puts permanent appointments at risk, with significant consequences for staff pensions. On 27 and 28 January, there will be another two days of strikes and demonstrations. And the education union under pressure is considering announcing an indefinite strike.

These demonstrations, strikes, protests confirm the increased militancy worldwide, which we have reported on many times in our press in recent years. The escalation of imperialist tensions and growing chaos, the fragmentation of world commerce, rising inflation and energy costs are so many signs of an unprecedented aggravation of the economic crisis. In all countries, the bourgeoisie is thus trying to push the consequences of the economic crisis onto the workers. Belgium is no exception.

Unions aim to prevent mobilisations gaining momentum

The bourgeoisie is well aware that these plans would provoke reactions in large sections of the class, and not only in the public service sector. It is aware that internationally the working class has already shown that it has overcome decades of declining struggles. That is why the bourgeoisie attaches importance to being well prepared and also putting in place the necessary forces to absorb and divert the expected resistance.

The unions saw the concern and discontent among the workers growing by the week and did not remain passive about preventing the discontent from manifesting itself in "uncontrolled" actions. On Sunday 8 December 2024, Ann Vermorgen (president of the ACV union) declared on television that the joint unions had decided to organise a day of action every month on the 13th in the coming period. This was followed by action days in December and January where the unions tried to limit mobilisations to certain sectors (especially education) and certain demands (pension reform in education).  The unions are using established tactics: the isolation and division of different sectors and regions in a series of days of action will eventually exhaust the will to fight.

However, the strength and dynamism of the 13 January mobilisation was such that it developed in other sectors and all regions and surprised the unions themselves. Indeed, the anger clearly shows that this goes beyond just one particular measure or announced ‘reform’. It is an expression of more general discontent and indignation and the reality of the return of militancy in the face of the rising cost of living, deteriorating working conditions, job insecurity and the spectre of falling into poverty.

 For years, we have been told that capitalism is the only possible system and that democracy is the best and most perfect political institution imaginable. These mystifications have no other aim than to demobilise the working class, to isolate workers and reduce them to powerlessness, to cut them off from the strength and solidarity of their class. However, despite incessant appeals to rely on the ballot box in order to act as a ‘counter-weight’ to austerity, alongside the calls to ‘defend democracy’ against the shameful discourse of the populists, the workers are rediscovering the path of struggle, the need to fight together on their own class terrain. It’s also significant that this dynamic of developing class struggles is taking place in the context of a war and constant increases in military spending which will have to be paid for by the working class.

Solidarity and unity are the strengths of our struggle

In order to really parry the attacks on our living conditions the struggle must be developed from the broadest possible basis by uniting all workers, regardless of the company, institution, sector or region in which they work. All workers are "in the same boat. All these groups are not separate movements but a collective cry: we are a city of workers - blue-collar and white-collar, unionised and non-unionised, immigrants and natives," as a striking teacher in Los Angeles in March 2023 put it. The strikes in Belgium are fully part of the movement which have been taking place over the last three years in other countries, notably Britain, the USA and France.

But it’s vital that the working class, in Belgium as elsewhere, is able to overcome certain weaknesses which appeared in the recent struggles:

• In 2022-23 in Britain, where workers from companies in different sectors, sometimes less than 100 metres apart, made no attempts to break the strict policy of picketing your own workplace alone, rather than seek solidarity and unite their struggles.
• In 2023 in France, where workers participated en masse in 14 ‘days of action’ against the government's pension plans, but failed to broaden the struggle to include strikes in companies and offices.

In Belgium, the bourgeoisie and its unions never cease spreading the poison of division: between the public and the private sectors, as between workers on either side of the language barrier. This is a traditionally difficult hurdle to overcome[1], but not impossible as we saw on 23 April 2023 when the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking teachers demonstrated in unison in Brussels. The strikes of 1983 and 1986 also brought together hundreds of thousands of workers from the public and private sectors and from the regions of Wallonia, Bruxelles and Flanders[2]. Drawing the lessons of past struggles is more than ever indispensable if we are to arm ourselves against the traps laid by the bourgeoisie.

Our strength is unity, solidarity in struggle! Not fighting separately but uniting the struggle together in one and the same movement; going on strike and sending mass delegations to join up with the other workers in the struggle; organising general assemblies to discuss together on the needs of the struggle; uniting around common demands. It is this dynamic of solidarity, expansion and unity that has always shaken the bourgeoisie throughout history.

Lac, 21.01.2025

 

 

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[1]  La coalition "Arizona" prépare une attaque frontale contre les conditions de travail et de vie, Internationalisme 381

 

 

[2] See "Vers l’unification des luttes", Internationalisme 111, August/September 1986