February 20, 2001: Solidarity Declaration of the CC MLPD with the Daewoo Workers on Strike in South Korea

Dear colleagues,

The Central Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) declares its solidarity with your resolute struggle to defend your jobs at Daewoo. We vehemently condemn the brutal intervention of the special police units. The warrants against 30 trade unionists must be revoked immediately! We support the Daewoo workers and their families who take the right of defending themselves against the state terror and carry out active resistance against the special police units deployed to fight rebellion.

In Germany, too, independent strikes are considered illegal; the trade unions only have a very restricted right to strike on matters of collective bargaining. For this reason, independent strikes in Germany increasingly combine with political demands. The struggle for the full legal right to strike in all matters is in the focus.

On January 25, 2001, the Opel (General Motors) workforce set a signal of international working-class unity. It was the first solidarity strike at GM which was coordinated on a European level. 40,000 workers in 9 plants in 5 countries (Belgium, England, Germany, Spain and Portugal) went on strike against the closure of the GM works in Luton, England, and against the destruction of jobs in other works. According to our information, GM is also playing a certain role in the case of the redundancies in your country. Since the talks on the takeover of Daewoo by GM in September, 5,540 jobs have been destroyed. Now further 1,751 jobs are at stake. The background is a new round of the new organization of the international production of the automobile monopolies. A worldwide battle of annihilation is raging, which only five to six automobile corporations will survive. The car workers must coordinate their struggle, the most important economic demand being the six-hour workday with full wage compensation - worldwide!

Capitalism is incapable of coping with the mode of production which today is organized on an international level. To make the enormous productive forces of this international production serve the needs of the masses instead of the needs of a handful of monopolies greedy for profit, a social solution is needed, that is, genuine socialism.

Your brave and resolute struggle is a signal for the international industrial proletariat to accept its strength and leading role in the struggle against the international corporations.

The MLPD party factory groups in the automobile industry will inform on your struggle

and will organize international solidarity. Please send us concrete information about your struggle, your demands and your forms of struggle and organization. In its weekly paper, Rote Fahne (Red Flag), the MLPD will report about it.

Forward with international working-class unity!

Workers of all countries, unite!

With cordial greetings,

in solidarity,

Stefan Engel - Party Chairman

Adresses:

Union KMWF, Fax: 00 82 2712 4253, e-mail: kmwf@netsgo.com

Korean Embassy in Germany: Schöneberger Ufer 89, D-10 785 Berlin,

Fax: 0049-30-260 6515