2023-09-26 13:52:43
The CTSE is a union center founded this year in Ecuador[1]. She was invited and participated in the 5th. Meeting of the International Trade Union Network of Solidarity and Struggles, recently held in São José dos Campos (Sao Paulo, Brazil). To get to know them better, we conducted this interview with their president Juan Fernando Rodríguez.
Q. How did the CTSE come about?
R. During the government of former Ecuadorian president Lenín Moreno, with a group of colleagues who worked there, we created the union of workers of the Ministry of Government (that is, in the heart of the capitalist State). There they begin to persecute the union and finally in the government of Guillermo Lasso, under the administration of Henry Cucalón, they fire Juan and more than 30 colleagues. So, we started a solidarity campaign, demanding his reinstatement, and we established relationships with other unions in the public sector and at the municipal level, as well as with some international organizations.
Initially, we were part of another union center and we quickly realized that this center, rather than supporting us, “worked against us” and we clashed with the bureaucratic methods with which the center was managed.
In November 2022, at a congress held at the Andean University of Ecuador (Quito), twenty-three unions broke with the old union center and left the congress. At the University’s doorstep, the proposal to create a new central office was launched and we began to work with that objective. In February 2023, at a conference held in Santo Domingo de las Tsáchilas, we founded the CTSE.
Q. What sectors does the CTSE group together? How is it organized?
R. We group 37 unions, mainly public workers at the national level. We are creating alliances with a branch union of agribusiness, under very difficult conditions due to the nature of that employer’s association. Four neighborhood associations, people who work in markets and street vendors, have also joined: Cayambe Tricycle Riders Association, Cayambe Street Vendors Association, Santa Rosa Neighborhood Association and Pedro Moncayo Chargers Association.
Congress elected an Executive Committee with a president (Juan Fernando Rodríguez) and several secretaries who assume specific portfolios. Its organizational chart includes a National Board with democratic representation through the participation of the general secretaries of each union.
Q. What are the postulates and objectives of the CTSE?
We consider that we are in a system of exploitation of the human being. Therefore, we are a workers’ organization that aims to overcome the concertation and delivery trade unionism carried out to date by the trade union cupolas in Ecuador.
At the same time that we claim to be a workers’ organization, we are clear that, in our country, there is a majority of the population that is attacked and impoverished by capitalism and its governments. In the cities, many must survive with precarious jobs, street vending and live in neighborhoods without essential services. For this reason, the CTSE is already incorporating associations that organize them.
Also, we are a country whose majority of inhabitants come from original indigenous peoples. Many of them are poor farmers who live by working the land in the mountain regions and their valleys. Others live in the Amazon jungle defending their ancestral tradition, that nature cannot be “private property,” and they live off what they extract directly from it.
For this reason, we have established relationships and conversations with various entities of the CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) with the objective of “strengthening the organization of workers in both the countryside and the city” and “strengthening ties with the indigenous movement.” ”.
In the recent national referendum on advancing or ending oil exploitation in the Yasuní National Park, we considered that this oil exploitation not only destroyed one of the largest natural reserves in the world but also destroyed the way of life of the people who inhabit it. For this reason, we participated in the call by the SI for the immediate suspension of this exploitation, and a clear majority of the Ecuadorian people had that same position.
We are aware that oil extraction is an important source of income for Ecuador and that numerous workers live directly or indirectly from this. But we believe that, like the entire economic process, this cannot be at the service of the profits of capitalist companies, which destroy nature and the way of life of entire peoples. For us, the essential thing is to defend nature and human life and, based on that premise, plan the use of natural resources at the service of people.
P. How do they connect to the Internet?
A. Based on the campaign to seek solidarity and spread our struggle, Solidaries and other European organizations in the Network contact us. We came with the idea that, as a young union organization, our participation in the V Congress of the CSP-Conlutas and this Meeting would serve as a learning experience for us. We leave very happy because we have been able to debate and exchange experiences with workers and union and social organizations from Brazil, other Latin American countries, Ukraine, Africa, Palestine and Europe.
We have many coincidences with what was formulated here: the way to achieve the objectives of the workers and the people is that of struggle and not that of conciliation and surrender; that, for this reason, we need union and social organizations of a new type; that our struggle is international because we face similar problems and enemies. Finally, the importance of solidarity and international support between workers and people of all countries.
Therefore, in addition to exposing the Ecuadorian problem, we send support to the struggle of the Jujeño people in Argentina[2] and we went in person to support the struggle of the workers of the Avibrás factory in this city of San Pablo[3].
We return to Ecuador convinced of proposing to the different instances of the CTSE that we join as full members of the Network.
(Interview by Alejandro Iturbe)
[1] See their Facebook page
em (20+) confederation of Ecuadorian solidarity workers – Search results | Facebook
[2] https://www.facebook.com/PSTUARG/videos/2126329507706233
#Confederation #Ecuadorian #Solidarity #Workers