Socialist website calls for European general strike as youth protests spread

The World Socialist Web Site published an appeal on 12 November calling for democratically elected rank-and-file action committees and a European general strike, citing youth protests in Germany and mass strikes in France and Spain. In the same week, Labor Notes reported that hotel workers in Seattle had won an 85-day strike, the longest hotel strike in Washington state history. One text is a political appeal from an organisation; the other is the record of a single workplace fight that ended in a victory.

What the appeal claims

According to the WSWS, 1.6 million people joined a one-day general strike in France "last week", and 11 million people went on strike in Spain on Wednesday. The site says protests and strikes are also shaking governments in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Albania and Serbia, and that more than 120,000 young people demonstrated in over 30 German cities on 31 October. These figures come from a single source and we have not been able to verify them independently.

The WSWS describes a movement "on a scale not seen since 1968" and lists the demands it says are being raised everywhere: stop the attacks on education and social services, and no to war and militarism. It argues that governments of every party are answering the youth revolt with repression, and that rising rents, falling wages and reintroduced conscription express a crisis of capitalism rather than the malice of any single government.

Its call is organisational: action committees elected in workplaces, schools, universities and neighbourhoods, acting independently of the trade union leaderships, linked internationally and preparing a European general strike that "poses the question of power". The appeal also attacks what it calls "the paralysing influence of the capitalist parties and trade unions".

A union win in Seattle

Labor Notes reports a different kind of victory. After 85 days on the picket line at Seattle's Embassy Suites by Hilton in Pioneer Square, workers won the longest hotel strike in Washington state history on 10 September. Their union, UNITE HERE Local 8, represents 4,000 hospitality workers in Oregon and Washington.

Strike captain and bartender Aspen Desmarais told Labor Notes: "I can live on a budget. Been doing it since day one." She said she and her co-workers were "tired of people talking down to us and not treating us with respect, when we're the reason that place stays running the way that it does." Two weeks into the strike, Hilton offered one cent per hour over its previous proposal, which the union says helped fuel outrage. The union held open bargaining so members heard the offer firsthand.

Two logics of struggle

The WSWS text argues that spontaneous youth protests must be fused with the organised power of the working class — factory workers, nurses, teachers and millions of others who keep society running — and that this fusion requires breaking from the existing union and party structures. The Seattle strike shows workers using their existing union, UNITE HERE Local 8, to win a concrete contract fight through sustained picket discipline and open bargaining.

Both sources agree that people are fighting back. The WSWS sees a continental wave that demands new, independent organs of struggle. Labor Notes documents a workplace victory won through the union that already exists. Neither source claims the other's strategy is wrong; they simply operate on different scales and with different theories of change.

What happens next depends on whether the European protests can sustain themselves and connect with workplace organisation, and whether victories like Seattle's can spread across an industry that relies on low-wage, often migrant labour. The WSWS has called for a European general strike. UNITE HERE Local 8 has won a contract. Both are facts on the ground.

This piece was generated automatically by an AI model from the sources listed below. It has not been reviewed by a human editor.

Sources

• From youth protests to class struggle! Prepare a European general strike! — World Socialist Web Site
• Lessons from an 85-Day Hotel Strike — Labor Notes