BOLIVIA - June 15th, 2017

After the closure of STIMIRO factory, the workers took the factory to defend their jobs and today they are holding a sit-down strike

TODAY WE ARE ALL STIMIRO!
IF THEY WIN, EVERYBODY WINS!

On June 13, workers from the STIMIRO factory (textile) marched together with delegates from different factories that attended the expanded factory workers plenum in La Paz. Among the cries of “Fabriles (factory workers) united, they will never be defeated! Employment stability!” The march traveled through the center of La Paz to the headquarters of manager Carlos Romero. This claim is due to the fact that on June 7 the general manager, with a memorandum, communicated overnight to the 30 workers of STIMIRO - mostly women - the closure of the factory. STIMIRO is owned by businessman Humberto Both, and together with ALTIFIBER and ALTIKNITS, it is part of a textile production chain.

The proposal of the manager at the closure of the factory is that the workers become part of ALTIFIBER, thus, most of them could "keep" their jobs, although those who can enter would lose profits gained from their sweat and muscles; they would enter to work as new workers, without benefits of seniority.
Faced with this blatant attack by the slave-owning employers, the workers took the factory and immediately went on strike and now are on watch inside it. This measure keeps on and with the passing of the days the workers announce that they will radicalize the measures, since the rank and file workers consider this attack of the employer has been done to the "best style of the government" when it closed the ENATEX textile factory and left 800 workers in the street in the middle of last year.

As a result of this hard attack on all workers, the government has been deepening its offensive on all sectors, such as the removal of education budget and the declaration of illegality of the doctors’ strike, and is filling the country with hundreds Of "Enatex", with a large number of layoffs, and removing the labor conquests such as those of the Huanuni miners, who also this year will not receive a salary increase (that is, no increase for two years on a row). But the working class has not said its last word and in the streets, through mobilizations, pickets, a sit-down strike and factory take-overs -as the workers of STIMIRO courageously demonstrate - the exploited are standing up.
The government and the employers know that if the attack on STIMIRO passes, they can advance against ALTIFIBER, ALTIKNITS, etc., factories and then against the working class as a whole. We must not let them to! The blackmail of "a closure due to low production" or any other excuse that the employers use is a falsehood, since they handle double accounting, a false one to show it to the ministry of labor to blackmail the workers as a whole, and another one with the real books that demonstrate its profits. Immediate opening of all accounting books, from the entire industry!

We must generalize the example of Polar and Punto Blanco (textile factories taken by their workers and put to produce under worker control) and Cerámica Victoria (Pottery). We cannot allow one minute more for them to be left alone. That is the way STIMIRO has to follow today! The former are the spearhead to stop the attack of the bosses and the government. Any factory that dismisses or suspends its workers, or closes, must immediately pass to produce under workers control without compensation, on the way to take ALL THE RANGE of production. For a committee of recovered factories to unify and coordinate the struggles! For self-defense committees to defend ourselves against any attack by the dogs of prey of the police of Morales, protectors of the private property of the bosses!
The manufacturing workers have proved to be the vanguard of the labor movement, and now together with the miners and their dynamite, we must take the road to recover the COB (Bolivian Workers Central Union) and put it at the service of the rank and file to unify the struggles, to defeat arrogant Evo Morales – an agent of transnational corporations - and fight for a workers 'and peasants' government.
Stop plundering our natural resources! Down with MERCOSUR! Expropriation without compensation and under workers' control of the transnationals plundering our gas and minerals! There is the money to be able to invest in the "national industry" and guarantee a dignified life for all exploited!
The liberation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves!

Liga Socialista de los Trabajadores Internacionalistas de Bolivia
(Socialist League of the Internationalist Workers of Bolivia)