São Paulo metro

Communiqué from the member organisations of the International Trade Union Solidarity and Struggle Network

Over the last period, metro workers have waged several confrontations with the Tarcísio government [governor of the state of São Paulo], with three strikes and a work stoppage against concessions, privatizations and outsourcing, against moral harassment and for workers' rights.

The Tarcisio government's response was anti-union, with politically motivated dismissals, million-dollar fines against the Metroviários - São Paulo union, criminal proceedings against the union's president, Camila Lisboa, the dismissal of the vice-president, Narciso Soares, and other leaders and team members, as well as warnings against our struggles, warnings to strike, among other attacks.

The category remained on the move, and in the fight against privatisation, as well as in the resistance to the implementation of an end-of-career plan, with the creation of a position that attempts to undermine our struggles and makes it difficult to hire through public tendering, the Companhia do Metropolitano de São Paulo once again used anti-union practices, by suspending Fenametro's Communications and Press Director, Alex Santana. It is worth mentioning that, a few months earlier, another Fenametro official, Ricardo Senese, who contributed to the fight against the privatisation of SABESP [water transport and treatment], was detained along with other activists and was the subject of criminal proceedings.

We have also denounced the persecution of train operators on line 1, who have joined the international movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people: when they took a photo with the Palestinian flag, 10 workers received a written warning, revealing the Zionist nature of the company's management and the current Tarcisio government.

More recently, two other activists were absurdly punished for defending their own lives as a result of the staff shortages they constantly denounce. An attempt to silence their voices.

In the face of these attacks on the right to demonstrate, the right to struggle and above all the right to strike, our organisations denounce the practices adopted by the Tarcisio government and the metro management, and we support the struggle of metro workers to cancel all punishments, dismissals, fines and attacks on the representatives of class organisations.

We also promote the ‘Manifesto against the persecution of São Paulo metro workers, their organisations and their leaders’. In defence of the right to strike and trade union organisation’, together with other organisations, parliamentarians, trade union leaders and intellectuals, which we see as part of a strong democratic campaign in defence of the right to strike.

Let's act together! Against concessions, privatisation and relocation! For the right to fight!