CNT demonstrated in Madrid against the cuts in labour and social rights

· Thousands of people arrived from all over the country to the neighbourhood of Vallecas, place of the march.
· The Confederation was very critical of the reform of collective bargaining as unnecessary, unjust and a source of further precarity.
· It called on other anticapitalist organizations to unite forces and stand against the savage attack which the working class is suffering.
Thousands of militants arrived from all over the country gathered this morning in the Madrid neighbourhood of Vallecas to denounce the policy of cutting labour and social rights which the PSOE government are imposing at a frenetic pace; some cuts are dismantling the last pillars of the welfare state which is already quite paltry and incapable of satisfying the most basic human needs.

At the end of the demonstration in the Azorín park, a rally took place in which Pablo Agustin, Secretary of Union Action of the Permanent Secretariat, Luis Fuentes, former General Secretary and Antonio Bana, Secretary of Union Action for the Andalucian Region spoke.

Besides such topics as the crisis, support for the 15-M movement and the necessity to increase the response in the companies, one of the most denounced reforms was that of collective bargaining, which, in the opinion of CNT, and despite the fact that its supporters staged a break-off, was already 90% agreed to earlier. Now the text will be approved by decree by the government and likewise make sure that the reform will not be balanced and will modify the structure of the collective bargaining to favour the interests of the bosses, to facilitate lowering of wages and the loss of the purchasing power of the employees. It will extend deregulation and labour flexibility in the companies, the rights guaranteed in the collective agreements will be lost, new forms of trash contracts will be created for young people and the Employers' Insurance Associations will be given competencies regarding common illnesses so control and pressure against workers who get ill will increase.

In all, under the umbrella of the reform of collective bargaining, a Labour Reform much deeper and prejudicial to the interest of workers than what was implemented in 2010 will take place. It will join the shameful ASE (Social and Economic Agreement) signed in February by the unions CCOO and UGT, the bosses and the government, where they contemplated a cut in pensions.

The workers organized in the CNT have rebelled against this and decided to break again with the dynamics of fear, despair, division and every man for himself, to begin to go on the streets and say "enough", just has thousands of workers in other parts of the world are already doing.

This process of mobilization, to have a real capacity to face the attack against the working class, will have to be made by different organizations and social movements, until the Social Pact is rejected and there is an anti-capitalist perspective. CNT made a call to start to work in this sense. June 4th is only the first step in which it encouraged all workers who share the need to organize and fight to take part.

Secretary of Press and Communication -  CNT