SYRIA - June 17th, 2016
Urem al - Kubra, West suburbs of Aleppo, in rebel area
Driven by extreme poverty and hunger for their families, 700 workers of the Syrian revolution working in the factory of a pro-Assad boss take it over and sack its manager
They marked the way to win the war; that’s why they were bombed by Bashar Al-Assad aircraft
It is necessary to expropriate all factories, banks, refineries and oil wells and put them to work under workers control to win the war!
Leaving the city of Aleppo, capital of the Syrian resistance, one can find to the West the town of Urem al - Kubra. There, as in several nearby parts in the North of Syria, starting from 2011 / 2012 the insurgent masses expelled the forces of the regime and its institutions, and won the streets by hundreds and hundreds of thousands in a revolutionary uprising for the bread to the cry of "the people want the fall of the regime".
But in this onslaught, the workers and the poor people of Urem encountered a brake: the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had occupied all factories in that location, in defense of private property, and had guarded their owners: bosses that had grown very rich under the regime of Bashar.
So they could reopen their factories to continue filling their pockets, paying increasingly lower wagesto the workers, selling the production to whoever had a market: to people in rebel areas, to Al-Assad, to ISIS, to Turkey...whatever. For the bosses everything is about preserving their profits and its origin: private property on which they exploit workers.
So it happened in a factory of printed clothing and plastic bags, with700 workers, located in this town of Urem. The factory is called Aqab, by the employer, one Abd Qadr al - Aqab, who lives in Hamdaniya, a city that is known as the residential place of choice for bosses in Northern Syria. The city is under control of the regime, and is strongly guarded by Bashar Al-Assad troops, his mercenaries, the Iranian Republican Guard and Hezbollah militia.
Aqab factory workers were recently taking a salary of 20 dollars a month, while at the beginning of 2011 they had got 300 a month. Tired of hunger, of miserable wages, of the extremely precariousconditions that exist in Syria under the war, pushed by their families’ hunger and the impossibility of giving them what they need, even though they spent 12 hours a day working hard within the factory, workers gathered together and demanded an increase.
With this claim they went to the office of the manager, who rejected the increase, saying that "these are the conditions you have to work in the war”, and said that if they did not accept them, “a huge queue of unemployed waiting for at the door would, instead".
Immediately afterwards, workers gathered at Assembly and decided not to accept any longer the miserable work conditionsand low wages or the threat of the Manager, and saw that they needed a solution, which was only in their own hands. Therefore, all together decided to sack the manager and take the factory in their hands, making it produce under their control.
Due to the unbearable situation in which they were, the workers advanced beyond the limits the FSA had imposed on them when taking the factory. They decided to control themselves what they themselves produced and keeping the profits they themselves generated.
Immediately the generals of the FSA came out in defense of the private property of the Assadistowner and commanded the workers to leave the factory, telling them that what they were doing "was a sin and completely at odds with the laws". But workers, already occupying the factory, were not willing to abandon it. They knew that there was the only possibility for them and their children to eat. Then decided to call base brigades to defend them, telling them they could pay the brigades members a salary, even doubling the amount that the bourgeois generals of the FSA offered. They raised that from what they produced they could contribute to the brigades that combatted in the battlefield against Bashar Al-Assad, since those gains were no longer going into the pockets of the Assadist bosses, but to the revolutionary masses. But the generals, always willing to carry on business with the Assadistbusinessmen-and not to win the war-, interrupted this coordination by means of thousands of maneuvers.
Even so, they could not evict the workers. The generals spent a month trying to get them out but they were not willing to leave the factory, which was now theirs. And then on past June 14, the plant was bombed by forces of Dog Bashar. The fire was accurate, its precise target was the factory. Luckily no worker died in that attack. But the factory was destroyed. The regime used all kinds of explosives, including ones that come in hoses that shed from the air which destroy the houses of the exploited in the "liberated areas", and now also their factories.
In fact this attack was done because in this factory the workers had advanced to the expropriation, to the workers’ control of production, and it marked a path forward that could be taken by all starving workers in the liberated areas which are under the same conditions as the Aqaba factory ones.
Moreover, everybody is eager to solve the problem of hunger. All people are eager to put their efforts and everything needed to win the war against Bashar Al-Assad. And for that it is necessary to expropriate the bourgeoisie and take control of wealth and production by the workers. Who prevent it are the generals of FSA, Jabhat the Nusra and all bourgeois army-parties. All of them are guardians of private property under different uniforms and different roles. In the liberated areas, and Urem in particular, FSA cannot open fire on the workers directly. It tried by various means giving an ultimatum to the workers to get out of the factory, but it failed. The workers walked out of the control of the FSA, and so it had to get the aircraft from Al-Assad to bomb the factory, as they had done in the industrial area of Damascus at the end of 2013 when the workers there were insurrected and 300 factories were taken over by them.
That’s why Dog Bashar bombed the factory after workers had taken it and not before;because while the owner and his manager were in control of the factory, there was trade with the regime. Moreover, the profits were going into the pockets of the owner, who lived in an area under the control of Al-Assad; but the revolutionary workers when taking over the factory had interrupted all this circuit, because now it was not about the business of the rich bosses, but about giving bread to working families and defeating the genocidal regime of Al-Assad.
Workers in Uremhave marked the road to the workers’ control, of the expropriation of the bourgeoisie to solve the problem of bread and put all available to win the war!
Let's take all banks and assets of the bourgeoisie by the workers and the poor people to move towards Damascus, defeating Dog Bashar and his allies, and so marching to victory!
Correspondent
