What is UİD-DER and What Does It Stand For?

Our Association of International Workers’ Solidarity, UİD-DER, has been founded in June 2006 by Workers Self-Education Groups (WSEG) which have been active in different industries such as metal, textile, petrochemistry. Revolutionary vanguard workers who make up WSEG had been conducting work in union rank-and-file, factories, strike places for many years. UİD-DER is the fruit of this continuous work carried on in a working class discipline. And we keep carrying on our work to strengthen this base on an international level as well.

Looking back, we see it much more clearly that UİD-DER has made progress towards its aims in a determined way with its planned, disciplined and patient work within the working class. Through this work we have already managed to set up many local offices in working class neighbourhoods in various cities. In April 2008 we started to issue our monthly bulletin İşçi Dayanışması [Workers Solidarity] which in a short period of time turned into a workers tribune reaching thousands of workers. We will keep reaching more and more workers through our work to protect and advance the gains and interests of the working class and heighten its organised struggle.

UİD-DER marches forward, struggle grows!

UİD-DER organises educational workshops/seminars once a month to convey the national and international history of struggles of the working class to all workers. In these seminars diverse subjects are presented and discussed ranging from the history of revolutions and struggles of the working class to actual, political and economic developments. Subjects like October Revolution, Paris Commune, history of revolutions, the birth and international struggles of the working class, imperialist wars and the fascist threat, capitalist crises, life and struggles of our revolutionary leaders, May 1 and March 8 are studied by WSEG. These seminars are carried out in a lively way with supporting means such as slides, recitation of poems and music. While the venues of these workshops are mainly the local offices of our association, we also carry out them in various local offices of unions from different industries with their participation. Thanks to this kind of work many young workers learn struggle experiences of the working class on a national and international level and restore confidence in their own class.

In order to help develop the working class culture of solidarity and struggle UİD-DER organizes diverse cultural activities since its foundation. Among them are courses on music instruments like guitar and baglama, folk dances and painting, all being carried out in our local offices. We also organise branches working on workers theatre, films, workers chorus, poetry, workers press, book library, besides organising football tournaments. All aspects of activities, technical details, preparing texts of presentations and other materials etc., all are carried out by workers alone taking part in these activities. After many hours of exhausting work in factories we meet and make the necessary preparations. Many of our class brothers/sisters who come along from various factories to join these activities join the ranks of class struggle with the self-confidence gained through getting acquainted with the culture of class struggle.

Apart from this work UİD-DER Workers Theatre Group staged plays with the main themes of May 1 and June 15-16, making the young generations meet with these historical experiences. Also UİD-DER’s music band Yıldızlara Özgürlük [Taking Freedom to Stars] makes performances in strike places and workers festivals, voicing the songs of struggle.

UİD-DER wages a struggle with all its might to free the syndical struggle from the grip of the bureaucracy and make militant class unionism gain the upper hand in unions. We organise solidarity visits to our striking class brothers/sisters in various industries and help them carry on their struggles. With a great patience and discipline we are striving to advance the struggle to organise through shop floor committees we form in factories. It is also one of our chief goals to strengthen the struggle of the working class with international solidarity acts.

Long live the international unity of working class struggle!

As workers from UİD-DER we believe in the necessity of organising the struggle not only on a national level but also on an international level. We stand against all kinds of discriminations, national, religious, racial, gender etc., which exploiting classes incite in order to divide workers and other labourers. We believe that the working class is an international class and that therefore it is necessary to establish its unity and struggle on an international level.

Against imperialist wars which turn the world into a blood bath we carry on many activities taking as our basis the internationalist interests of the working class. Both in mass meetings and our education activities we voice in a determined way that imperialist wars can only be prevented by international struggle of the working class and that peace on earth can be brought by a working class power. As workers who defend the right of nations to self-determination we recognise and support the struggle of the Kurdish people for their democratic, political and national demands. We fight for internationalist ideas to take root in the workers movement against nationalist and chauvinist ideas that make peoples hostile to one another.

The crisis caused by capitalism showed once again that the destiny of the working class is the same all over the world. UİD-DER speeded up its work in factories and unions with the beginning of the crisis. Our rallying cry has been “make the bosses pay the bill”. We have been calling on all workers in our reach to fight and raise our immediate demands against crisis. We also strive to help and support the struggle of our brothers/sisters who have been sacked on account of crisis. UİD-DER makes effort for all workers, with or without job, sub-contracted or not, unionised or non-unionised, to get united on the basis of class interests and heighten the struggle against the capitalist class. We know that not a single detachment of the working class can emancipate on its own.

Workers of all lands, unite!

Imperialist war, economic crisis, unemployment, poverty and hunger reveal the barbaric face of the capitalist system. Humanity and nature are driven to annihilation under the rule of capital. The only force on earth to save humanity and nature from this annihilation is the world working class. Capitalism will not fall down by itself, but it will be brought down through the international revolutionary struggle of the working class. The only choice ahead for the workers of all lands is to fight. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win!