Continuing workers’ resistance despite the manoeuvres of the unions

For the past year, the deepening global crisis of capitalism, the growing destabilisation of the world economy, Trump's disruptive “America first” economic policy, and the explosion of military spending in Europe following the split within NATO, have forced the European bourgeoisie as a whole to intensify their attacks on social budgets and workers' wages. This is particularly true for Belgium, which is also burdened by heavy sovereign debt and a large state budget deficit, denounced by the EU.

Over the past year, taking advantage of unexpectedly favourable election results, the Belgian bourgeoisie has set up a new centre-right government under the leadership of Bart De Wever, which plans to cut nearly €26 billion from the budget in order to reduce the state debt (105% of GNP) and announcing a new package of measures worth nearly €10 billion to limit the budget deficit, while at the same time doubling the national defence budget.

For the past year, workers have been facing severe attacks on state social spending, particularly on unemployment benefits (now limited to a maximum of two years, which will result in the exclusion of 100,000 unemployed people from 2026 onwards), pensions (penalties for early retirement and cuts to civil service and teachers' pension schemes), and health benefits (half a million long-term sick people risk losing their benefits due to ‘insufficient or uncooperative’ efforts to return to work). In addition, in terms of wages, bonuses for overtime or night work are being drastically reduced and the government plans to ‘temporarily and partially suspend’ the automatic indexation of wages and benefits to inflation in 2026.

The growth of workers’ resistance

As soon as the government's plans were announced at the end of 2024, the unions rushed to occupy the social arena by announcing various actions to limit any workers reaction. However, workers' response has been strong, exceeding the unions' expectations, and forcing them to step up their actions and, above all, to increase the number of national demonstrations in Brussels.

Let us take a closer look at the dynamics. As soon as the first leaks about these plans emerged, the trade unions decided to organise a first day of action on 13 December 2024, with the aim of focusing discontent on the European Union's directives. This first day brought together some 10,000 demonstrators, mainly trade union representatives, but the manoeuvre did not reduce discontent. On the contrary, it continued to grow, as evidenced by the second day of action on 13 January, which the trade unions wanted to limit to ‘the defence of pensions in education’. In reality, participation reached 30,000 demonstrators from an increasing number of sectors and from all regions of the country. On 27 January, a ‘historic’ regional sectoral demonstration by French-speaking teaching staff brought together 35,000 participants against the severe cuts imposed by the regional government, with the presence once again of many workers from other sectors and regions. The announcement of the ‘Arizona’ government's austerity programme only fuelled the protests, and the third national demonstration on 13 February, aimed - according to the trade unions - at ‘defending public services’, brought together nearly 100,000 demonstrators from all sectors, who expressed their desire to move beyond the sectoral and regional fragmentation of the movement imposed by the unions and called for a global fight against the government's attacks. Despite attempts by the unions to demobilise the movement during the spring through passive one-day general strikes, where everyone stays at home, or repeated and highly unpopular sectoral strikes in the railways, with divisions between unions, the last national demonstration on 25 June, on the eve of the holidays, still brought together nearly 50,000 demonstrators expressing their undiminished fighting spirit.

Beyond the figures, it is important to highlight the characteristics of this dynamic of growing militancy:

- it was triggered not by concrete and specific measures, but by the announced global plans. More than ever, the slogan ‘enough is enough’ was at the heart of the desire to mobilise;

- it was marked by a refusal to be passive, to remain ‘isolated in one's corner’, but on the contrary by a desire to mobilise ‘on the streets’;

- Finally, it was characterised by a refusal to fragment the movement, but pushed for the unification of resistance across sectors and regions.

Even if the combative dynamic of these first six months of 2025 in Belgium was still not able to detect, let alone oppose, the unions' manoeuvres of diversion and sabotage, the development of resistance was firmly rooted in the class struggle, and its characteristics, as outlined above, are similar to those of the summer of discontent in the UK in 2022, the movement against pension reform in France during the winter of 2023, and the strikes in the United States, particularly in the automotive industry and at Boeing, in late 2023 and early 2024. Thus, the mobilisation of the working class in Belgium is part of the international dynamic of ‘rupture’.

It is essential to understand that this dynamic of labour struggle in Belgium is not isolated but is one of the expressions of a break with years of passive submission by workers to the attacks of the bourgeoisie, of atomisation, but also of underground maturation and the ongoing process of reflection. "The recovery of worker’s’ combativity in a number of countries is a major, historic event which does not only result from local circumstances and can’t be explained by purely national conditions. […] Carried forward by a new generation of workers, the breadth and simultaneity of these movements testify to a real change of spirit in the class and represents a break with the passivity and disorientation which has prevailed from the end of the 1980s up till now."[1]

The bourgeoisie is trying to make people forget the gains made by workers' mobilisations in early 2025

However, the summer holiday ‘break’ was largely used by the unions to take the lead and develop an insidious tactic with the intention of countering this rising dynamic of militancy and unity across sectors, under the guise of radicalism. Thus, they first called for a new national demonstration on 14 October with the intention of ‘breaking all records’, while taking care to hinder the momentum of militancy and reflection. They distributed more than 75,000 free train tickets to their members to come and spend the day in Brussels and avoided any gathering or discussion at the end of the demonstration, thanks in part to the confrontations between the Black Blocs and the police, which led to the rapid dispersal of the demonstration.

In short, the unions succeeded in creating a misleading image of great radicalism through the 130,000 participants, while largely dissolving any expression of combativity or reflection within the demonstration. Having succeeded in presenting themselves as the leaders of the struggle, the unions then announced two types of movements, presented as further steps in the escalation of the struggle: a series of three days of strikes leading up to a general strike on the last day from 24 to 26 November, and the implementation of radical actions in certain sectors, such as the possibility of a week-long strike by railway workers in December.

When the unions announce ‘attacking actions’, mistrust is in order. And indeed, on closer inspection, it is clear that the announced actions are precisely aimed at undermining the gains of the struggles from December 2024 to June 2025:

- totally passive general strikes, where strikers remain individually at home, aim to make people forget the dynamic of active mobilisation and gathering in the demonstrations of the winter and spring of 2025. In fact, the so-called three-day general strike from 24 to 26 November is a joke designed to blind the working class, with no real gatherings and no possibility of travelling and meeting up. Moreover, the calls for strike action differ according to sector and region, and companies such as La Poste, secondary education and many private firms are not participating.

- the organisation of sectoral movements (railway workers, bus drivers), regional movements (French-speaking education) or movements by social category (unemployed, long-term sick, retired), stimulated by the fact that the first concrete and specific measures are being taken, aims to counter the momentum for unification across sectors and regions that emerged from the demonstrations in the first half of 2025 and to exhaust these sectors in long and unpopular movements.

Furthermore, the trade union initiative is supported by a whole series of campaigns, propagated in particular by the leftists of the PTB, aimed at recuperating the more “critical” elements around the mobilisations for Gaza and a Palestinian state or against violence against women.

Finally, the bourgeois media constantly harp on about the “irresponsible” nature of workers' resistance in the face of threats to national security (hype about unidentified drones over military bases) and the danger of bankruptcy for the “worst pupil in the European class” if budget cuts are not made. Even the unions subscribe to this argument and recognise that everyone must make efforts and tighten their belts, provided that this is ‘fair’, in line with the campaign developed by the left and far left of the bourgeois apparatus, which claims that ‘the wealthy must also accept sacrifices’.

Against the barbarism of capitalism, class confrontations will continue

Clearly, the unions have taken the lead, and the momentum of the struggle has reached a plateau for the moment as it faces a multitude of obstacles: not only those which, as we see in the case of the unions, are put in place by the capitalist state to prevent the development of a real fighting force of the exploited, but also those which are the product of the descent into misery, war and barbarism that global capitalism is bringing about in its final phase of decomposition. Faced with these obstacles, workers are only very slowly regaining their consciousness of being a social and historical force, the working class. In the current context of capitalist decomposition, characterised by fragmentation, withdrawal into oneself, and fear of the future, reconnecting with one's international class identity and the revolutionary perspective it contains is a difficult and tortuous challenge.

However, while the resistance of the working class is temporarily numbed in Belgium, this does not mean that it has been defeated, for several reasons:

- anger has not disappeared; the working class in Belgium has not been defeated; it retains its potential for struggle and reflection continues within it;

- the struggles in Belgium are part of an international dynamic of struggles and contribute to the maturing of consciousness that is developing at an international level within the class and which will grow;

- the economic situation continues to worsen and attacks will materialise and intensify on all fronts, as already announced in the government's new plan for budget cuts of nearly €10 billion: unemployment, pensions, social and sickness benefits, indexation, working more for the same wage, flexible working without compensation (night work), price increases, etc.

- in addition, the destabilisation of political structures linked to the decomposition of capitalism is likely to increase pressure on the living and working conditions of the working class, as in the case of the Brussels region, where the inevitability of financial bankruptcy and budgetary paralysis is becoming clearer due to the absence of a government for more than a year and a half.

The class confrontations currently shaking Belgium are particularly illustrative of the context in which workers' struggles will develop in the current period, especially in industrialised countries, with attacks coming from all sides due to the acceleration of the economic crisis, interacting in a whirlwind with the expansion of militarism and the spread of chaos. Whether or not they succeed in forcing the government to back down (necessarily temporarily), these struggles are not in vain. By raising their heads collectively, by refusing to resign themselves, workers are preparing for future struggles and, step by step, despite inevitable defeats, we are laying the foundations for a new world. It is only through struggle that the proletariat can become conscious that it is the only force capable of abolishing capitalist exploitation.

R. Havanais / 24.11.2025