Austria: successful student strikes for free education On Wednesday October 19 the “Action Committees for Free Education” organised successful school student strikes in Vienna, Linz, Wels and Vorarlberg. The strikes were a success and clearly show that the youth movement against the education policy of the government is moving forward.
Student mobilisations in Austria - Defend the right to education! The Conservative Austrian government has been introducing severe cuts in spending on education, reducing university places, introducing fees and so on. This coming Friday (October 7) the government will get a taste of the students’ anger. Action committees have sprung up and called a day of action.
Picket in solidarity with Cipla/Interfibra workers in Vienna On Thursday, July 14, a group of Young Socialists and representatives of the Editorial Board of Der Funke organised a picket in front of the Brazilian embassy to protest against the threatened repression of the Cipla and Interfibra workers who have occupied their factories to defend their jobs.
1945 – 2005: Never again! We have just celebrated the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the liberation from fascism. Exactly 60 years ago the leadership of the German Wehrmacht signed the capitulation. Yesterday in the former concentration camp (KZ) of Mauthausen and in Vienna thousands of people showed their opposition to war and to fascism.
A Clockwork Orange – Time is running out for Austria’s right-wing coalition government! Some of our readers will perhaps remember the inauguration of the right-wing coalition government in Austria in February 2000. For the first time since 1970 the Social Democratic Party was not part of the federal government. The new government was formed by Wolfgang Schüssel of the conservative Peoples’ Party and Jörg Haider, the leader of the Freedom Party. This led to a big movement of Austrian “civil society” and a wave of international protests starting with the tops of the EU. Many on the left saw the threat of fascism because of the participation of the Freedom Party in this new bourgeois government.
Austria: Whose street? Ours! - Balance sheet of the anti-fascist demo in Vorarlberg Some 800 anti-fascists responded to the appeal of the Marxist-led Sozialistische Jugend (SJ, Young Socialists) Vorarlberg to demonstrate in Bludenz, a traditional working-class town in the conservative region of Vorarlberg, next to the Swiss and German border. With this demo the anti-fascist movement has again gone onto the offensive.
May Day in Austria The celebrations of May Day this year was another show of strength of the working-class in Austria. In Vienna more than 100.000 militants of the Social-Democratic Party and the unions joined the march. In other industrial centres thousands more joined the rallies, often in their work clothes, like the Fire Brigades in Vienna or the steelworkers of the Voest in Linz.
The Austrian Crisis and Communism The Austrian crisis is a particular manifestation of the crisis of democracy as the main form of bourgeois rule. The excessively high tension of the international struggle and the class struggle results in the short circuit of the dictatorship, blowing out the fuses of democracy one after the other. The process began on the periphery of Europe, in the most backward countries, the weakest links in the capitalist chain. But it is advancing steadily. What is called the crisis of parliamentarism is the political expression of the crisis in the entire system of bourgeois society. Democracy stands or falls with capitalism. By defending a democracy, which has outlived itself,...
February 12, 1934 - 70 year anniversary of the Austrian uprising 70 years ago the Austrian workers were the first in Europe to undertake an armed struggle against a rising fascist regime. The events in Austria 1934 show quite clearly that there is no “peaceful” and “democratic” way to socialism on the basis of a bourgeois parliament.
The strike of the Austrian railway workers – a taste of things to come After the pension reform in spring 2003, the conservative black-blue government (Peoples Party and Freedom Party) wasted no time in launching a new attack on the Austrian labour movement. The Austrian Railways (OeBB) were to be split up similar to the fragmentation of British Rail 10 years ago into 10 different companies. This would make downsizing the workforce much easier and would also have tremendous effects on one of the most highly organised sectors of the labour movement.
Railway workers strike in Austria Today the railworkers' union, GdE organised a 12-hour strike against the plans of the right-wing government to split the Austrian Railways into different units which has to be seen as a major step towards the privatisation of the railways.
Austria: A new stage in the class struggle Earlier this year we witnessed the reawakening of the Austrian working class in a series of huge mass mobilisations. The bureaucratic leadership of the unions called off the movement without having gained any major concessions. If they think that was the end of it then they have surprises coming their way.
Successful socialist youth camp in Austria 146 comrades attended our "Pfingstseminar", a socialist youth camp organised by the Marxist tendency of "Der Funke" in co-operation with several branches of the Young Socialists (Sozialistische Jugend, SJ) and other left wing youth organisations.
Strikes all over Austria - "All wheels stand still..." Today Austria is going on strike. It is the biggest strike movement the country has seen for decades. All sections of the Austrian working class will participate in this mobilisation against the pensions reform planned by the right wing government.
Austria: rain, hail and a wave of protest - 200,000 workers march against the pensions reform Tuesday afternoon Vienna saw the biggest thunderstorms people can remember. Despite these catastrophic weather conditions 200,000 workers turned up from all over the country in response to the call of the ÖGB (Austrian Trade Union Federation) to protest against the proposed pensions "reform".
