APRIL 2014 - Comunication nº 2

General Secretariat, Communication No. 2,
April 2014

Comrades.

PRESENTATION:

Remember what was said in nº 1:

<< The contents of any number of "COMMUNICATION" may always be corrected by the members of the collective leadership elected at the founding congress.
These will always be complementary to the contents of the website of the UIS communications: www.pensionistas.info   >>

The web pages other than Spanish are not much updated.
We will post links to all the webs of P&R class organizations on the planet. Please, send these links.

CONTENTS:

I pay all accounts made since COMMUNICATION nº 1:

A)      Work of the General Secretariat (SG). -

1 -. The SG has directly contacted each and every one of the people in the management team. I have received replies from all of them except Comrade Bahadur Mohan, Vice-President of Asia. I asked for help about the Secretariat of the WFTU.
The SG has asked members of the Technical Commission of Inquiry to begin their task.

. 2 - The SG asks for suggestions regarding events in the corresponding UIS to send greetings as P &R. For example, Congress of TUI Transport planned for September 2014.
This encompasses in particular the Secretariat of Propaganda, but anyone of the management team can propose a statement signed by the SG, or collectively. The best way to go about is to produce a draft text in at least one of the 3 languages, better the 3, we use to make our communications.

. 3 – I propose that the Public documents produced are signed by the President and SG.

. 4 - I keep stressing the need for translators: I ask people to propose translators in French, English and Spanish.
We need communication between all people who compose the collective leadership, AND THAT IS ONLY POSSIBLE WITH SPEECH TRANSLATORS.

. 5 - We have to start putting dates to activities that affect us all.
For example, we already have the date of 3 October as World Day of FSM, this year 2014 focused on the fight against unemployment. P&R supports that there will be fewer people out of work if we win the battle to lower the age of retirement (with all rights) of persons working.
We also know that in March 2015 the group meeting will address the UIS P & R in Bahrain. We can specify the days until we know the date of the Presidential Council of the WFTU provided in Gabon (Africa) beginning the year.
These dates should be considered when dates for regional continental Congresses are set.

6 -I enclose my Sindical CV (Curriculum Vitae) for the knowledge of the other members of the management of TUI P & R. See ANNEX 1. -
I take this opportunity to ask all people who are part of TUI commandment to write (in 3 languages) your Union CV.
If there are no arguments against CV, I will post these on the website of the UIS.

. 7 - I open a collective reflection about the gifts that are sometimes given at meetings or congresses. I ask for opinions. All arguments are in ANNEX 2. –

. 8 - Communicate the FSC of France has already decided the comrade Alain Rodriguez to assume the Secretariat of Propaganda. Our best wishes for this companion in his new job. On April 12 Alain Rodriguez will be meeting Quim Boix.

9 -. I ask to send all the interventions made on 4, 5 and 6 February at the Barcelona Congress. See APPENDIX 3 -. Already videos of the speeches made the 4-2-14, the only ones recorded, are starting to be on the web.

10 -. Presence ILO. It corresponds to us as UIS P & R, being a global organization, to have an intervention at the conference that takes place each year in Geneva in early June. I have asked the WFTU Secretariat guidelines covering the efforts we make to be recognized for these rights (the FSM representatives must be always supported by the ILO).

11 -. Public presentation of the results of the founding congress of the TUI P&R WFTU. We keep making them (I know this was done in Ecuador, Australia, France, India and Spain), but with more advertising and intensity. Our Congress in Barcelona was a global event the bourgeoisie has silenced, but we have to make it known to the whole working class, while getting support to develop the agreements reached in Congress.

B)      Work of other members of management. -

. 1 - The SG has not yet received the Work Plans of the following Vice Presidents: Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Yes it has received the first plan of work of the Vice-President for America, the companion Martha Hervas of Ecuador: traveling to Havana the 1st May for meetings there. TRY TO CONTACT THE MAXIMUM NUMBER of UNIONS of all America. Also, begin preparations for the Congress to decide how to work on this continent as UIS P & R.

. 2 - None of the Secretariats has filed a Plan of Work. We know that some are being prepared.

3 -. I DEMAND that starting from the month of May, every 2 months, each responsible for a task sends a bimonthly report of the work done and place their proposals for the next two months. The person responsible of the first report should have it before May 1.

4 -. Pending to appoint the remaining two people, union leaders, which should accompany Comrade Costas Skarparis at the Committee on Financial Control. The proposal is one from Algeria and one from Pakistan.

5 - Also we expect to know this March the collective decisions of the USB unions of Italy and Senegal, to confirm their proposed presence in management teams.

6 -. Remember that we have a number of completed surveys (11 in Spanish, 11 in English and 8 in French), but we are concerned that more countries might answer. So I start asking members of the UIS to worry about answering the survey for your country (we are missing a few) and ALSO the neighbouring countries or influence.

7 - I ask the Technical and Research Commission to start working on the study of all the surveys we have.

Barcelona, April 2014.

Quim Boix
WFTU Presidential Council
Secretary General of the UIS (Union International)
Pensioners and Retired (H & J) of the FSM
http://www.wftucentral.org/?language=es
http://www.pensionistas.info/web/es
Sant Joan Pg 176 5-3, 08037 Barcelona, Spain.
0034 609547814 (only for urgent matters)

NOTE -.I've put pending issues in red.

ANNEX 1.-
Quim Boix i Lluch. Born in 1945. Industrial Engineer degree from the High Technical College of Industrial Engineering, Barcelona 1970.

I was born to a couple of elementary school teachers. Mi father was dismissed by Franco´s dictatorship for being loyal to the Republic.

I joined the students´ struggle in 1963; in 1964 I joined the political struggle.

In 1963 I was appointed student´s delegate of the Engineers´ College of Barcelona in clear opposition to the dictatorship official student´s trade union. In 1965 I was appointed representative by thousands of engineering students on a regional basis in order to establish the Student´s Democratic Trade Union at the Barcelona University (SDEUB).

The opening sessions for this trade union opposed to the dictatorship were held  in a catholic monastery in Barcelona (taking advantage of the meeting right granted to Catholics by the Concordat signed between the Vatican and the Spanish government). After this meeting I was arrested and brutally tortured by the dictatorship´s police. These tortures were the origin of the first demonstration by progressive priest at the streets of Barcelona (12-5-1965). Consequently I was expelled from the University for three years that I spent in jail and in an army garrison in the Sahara´s wilderness, where I was confined as a private after being dismissed of my rank at the University´s Militia, starting my term of service again.

After those three years I went back to the university while I made my living doing various jobs. I was just married then and had my first son, born with some anomalies due to the shock produced by my arrest and subsequent tortures to my wife (Michèle Le Falchier, dead in 2007) when she was pregnant. 
After my degree I started to work as a computers engineer. In 1970 I was fired, I went to labor court (the first engineer in doing so during the dictatorship) but lost the case. Afterwards I went to work in the textile industry just to be fired again due to my activities as a trade unionist. I went to work for a metal International corporation, Boveri-Oerlikon (BBO). There I was appointed as head of the computers´ department for Spain till I was democratically elected as the workers´ spokesman in order to fight for the new collective regulations. I was fired again, as the company considered that those two activities were not compatible. As a result, the workers went to general strike the day I was called by the Judie of the Labor´s Court and sang The International in my support. A partially positive sentence was passed to my right to be under contract again as an engineer, so I had to appeal to the Madrid´s Supreme Court, turned to be unemployed  during the following four years, while I was waiting for a new sentence to be passed.

During these years I worked as a volunteer without salary for the trade union Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) – actually I received my wages as social benefits to the unemployed before CCOO signed with the government the agreement focused in deep cuts on social benefits in terms of the money received by the unemployed worker as well as cuts on the terms and conditions of these benefits. During the firt part of this four years period I was the second in charge of the CCOO organization´s branch in Catalonia, and afterwards I worked for the trade union´s Secretary as responsible of Professional Technicians and cadres (TPCs) apart from being elected member of the Executive Council of CCOO when Marcelino Camacho was its General Secretary and second responsible for TPCs on a national basis.

At this post I traveled very oftenly to France, Italy and Portugal to keep in contact with the class conscious trade unions of these countries.

After losing before the Highest Court (it happened in 1980; in spite of the political changes operated in the country after Franco´s death, nothing had changed concerning the bourgeoisie´s hegemony over the Justice system) I went to work from a private company to a state-owned enterprise, where I was appointed Engineer for the municipality of a small town near Barcelona: Montcada i Reixac.
During my working life I have been fired eight times, arrested 11 times and tortured in several occasions. I have been judged twice by the dictatorship´s court known as Public Order Court (Tribunal de Orden Público / TOP) that followed the fascist’s war tribunals. I was sentenced twice to serve time, six months each that I did in different jails.

I joined the Communist Party in 1964, taking part in all kind of responsibilities. In 1981 I was spokesman for those at the Party opposed to the EuroCommunism who won, on a democratic basis, the 5º Congress (in spite of the trying’s by Santiago Carrillo to avoid it). This was the first Congress legally held by the Catalan Communist of the PSUC. My last political task (prior to my current political responsibility as member of the Guarantees Commission of the PCPE) was as responsible of International Affairs of the Communist Party of the Spanish Peoples (PCPE). I held this post during 18 years till 2009; frome then on I continued my work helping the further FSM´s development.

At 65, being the highest union representative in the company I worked for, I became a pensioner thus funding the CSU (Unitary Trade Union) of Pensioners and Retirees of which I´m currently President.
I was responsible of the Solidarity Commission with the Political Prisoners during Franco´s dictatorship (at this time I got in contact for the first time with the FSM, as the Spanish workers and political prisoners received a huge support from this organization. I was founder member of four local associations in Barcelona – my town. I also took part in other several platforms of unitary concern as the “Xarxa Contra els Tancaments, l’Atur i la Precarietat” (“social net against cuts, closures and precariousness) that set the first stages to coordinate the alternative and class conscious trade unionism in Catalonia – opposed to the collaborating trade unionism of CCOO and UGT.

In 2005, in Havana, Cuba, I took part in the XV Congress of the FSM as Spanish Observer and as a representative of the class conscious trade unionism opposed to the collaborationist trade unionism developed by CCOO (at this point we must point out that CCOO left the FSM at the end of XX century in spite of the help it received from the FSM during Franco´s dictatorship).

I represented the FSM in several international activities of solidarity and support to the Sahara during three consecutive years (EUCOCO). I was also present at the congress of UGTSARIO in the liberated territories of Tinduf and also ar the International Conference RANSA 2009 (High Level meeting for Food Security) held in Madrid. I took part in several meetings held in Europe by the FSM as wwell as in several international trade union´s seminaries.

At the XVI Congress of the FSM (held in April 2011) I was elected member of its Presidential Council. At this Congress I pointed, on behalf of the CSU of pensioners and retirees of the Spanish state, to the necessity to organize the International of Trade Unions of pensioners and retirees (UIS number 10) of the FSM. George Mavrikos took note of this proposal to appear in the conclusions approved by the 16th Congress.

For that reason I was called during the 16ª congress to the first International of pensioners and retirees along with the other pensioners that were also delegates in the Congress. Afterwards I was elected as President of the Committee in charge of preparations of the First World Congress of Trade Unions of pensioners and retirees attached to the FSM. (see: www.pensionistas.info )..

During two years we prepared this great event that took place in Barcelona in February 2014. At this Congress I was unanimously elected as General Secretary of the new International of pensioners and retirees at the FSM.

Barcelona, March 2014.

ANNEX 2.-

Reflections on gifts.

I want to start by explaining that in Barcelona in February 2014, in the Founding Congress of the TUI PyJ WFTU, I, as SG, received the following gifts: a) clothes from India (of the two delegations), b) a book of Cyprus, c) a bottle of liquor of Greece; d) 2 wooden objects Nepal e) 6 watches from Bahrain f) cigars, cigarettes and poster from Cuba, and probably forgot some (I apologize).
I THANK those who made each of the gifts. Given the dynamics of Congress I did not personally thank anyone (eg Bahraini comrades gave me watches while I was driving the car falling almost asleep -bringing them to search the flight back to their country).
I know the gifts were also received by other delegates and leaders of the new UIS. In several cases the deliveries were made in public, always with the aim of showing appreciation.
Some also received personal gifts, not everybody (it was not possible for the 60 that made militant and voluntary), comrades who helped the organization and functioning of Congress. I know some cases, certainly not all.
It is a good habit of mankind, dating back to the origins of the history, centuries and millennia, the exchange of gifts. And specially when there are meetings or international events.
Gifts are a token of friendship and leave a good memory in people receiving and satisfaction corresponding to the attention received by the person who has traveled to another country and delivered the gift.
So far no problem.
Reflection concerning the open gifts that do not have collective use.
If the gift is for an organization or group, this organization decides what to do with the gift: expose at its headquarters, place it in the library, etc..
The problem is, for me as Secretary-General, when the gift is only for personal use (like some of the gifts received during the Congress of Barcelona).
Also, in these cases there is usually not enough presents (it may be too expensive) so that you can give one to each delegation or person present.
Then the gifts accumulate in the person with greater collective responsibility. And, again, if these are gifts for personal use, an unfairness or inequality appears. And the class unions fight for equality.
Surely the intention of whom makes the gift is not to create inequality or to embarrass the gift recipient.
But I, as a recipient of some of those gifts (I mean gifts I cannot share), it does still feel uncomfortable, two months after the Congress why I promote this reflection:
I JUST? RECEIVE A GIFT FOR A COLLECTIVE WORK?
I think this is the crux of the problem.
So I open reflection on our UIS, and before resolving between us the conclusion, I present my proposal.
MY PROPOSAL is clear:
a)      The real gift that makes each delegation attending a meeting in another country is their presence at the meeting. They must pay the trip.
b)      If you want to leave a souvenir, it should always be something for public use, either as an exhibit at the headquarters of the organization which organized the meeting, either for consumption of all (ie, it must bring enough). This is, a copy for each person present (probably so expensive that my proposal becomes deterrent and will conclude not carrying any gifts or wearing a simple logo or small object, as Congressmen of various delegations did at Barcelona).
c)      We advise then not to carry gifts for personal use, given exclusively to one or several of the leaders, but for all the people present.
I HOPE YOUR COMMENTS REGARDING THIS PROPOSAL

ANNEX 3.-

WE ARE GOING TO PUBLISH THE INTERVENTIONS MADE AT THE CONGRESS HELD IN BARCELONA:

Comrades,

Very patiently we are try to place on the web all the interventions performed on February 4th, 2014 in Barcelona during the Public Opening of the Congress in which the new International of Trade Unions of Pensioners and Retirees of the FSM was launched.

At this moment we can only place the videos of the interventions made at the Engineers College, as these are the ones we have recorded. We regret that as it has been impossible to separate the images previously recorded of those taken during the interventions and those that appeared on the stage screen. All these elements gave continuity to everyone at the opening act, but now it could happen that sometimes the images doesn´t correspond with what the speaker says. We apologize to all of you.

The work of placing one by one the interventions on the web takes a long time and once again is due to the voluntary effort of the person in charge of the web. For this reason, interventions will gradually appear in the web´s place of the language used by the speaker (therefore, al interventions will appear in the Spanish section of the web, as this was the only language to which all of them were translated during the act).
At this point, we want to ask you to please forward by e.mail and if possible in one of the three official languages of the Congress: French, English and Spanish, all the interventions performed during the meetings held in Barcelona.

It is possible that those who intervened without a previously written text don´t have a printed copy of what they said, however we can accept similar texts on a five minutes basis. Although those text wouldn´t be an exact copy of what was said it is obvious that they will carry the basic ideas exposed at the Congress.

As it will take five years till our second Congress, this documents will take part of the historical documents of the new International of Trade Unions.

Thanks to all of you for your patience and understanding.