Air France strikes follow Alitalia wildcat

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7729586.stm

Today the pilots of Air France struck for four days to protest a retirement age change of five years passed in parliament, while Alitalia came to the fifth day of their wildcat, creating what appears to be an uptick in momentum for the working class in the airline industry. Their industry has been taking a series of hard hits lately, and now the workers, in protest not only against the company, but against the state, have seen the class enemy weaken and advanced against it. After all, the ruling class is still on the offense: "'The economy is in tough shape,...'What you want to do is to be able to manage down your capacity so you don’t have to lower your prices,'" said Delta President Ed Bastian.

In times of crisis, the proletariat must hit hard against the weakened bourgeoisie, and, like these workers, punish the State for its attempts to ease the financial blowback from the frenzied loaning and invented money that started the corporations. The State, in this case apparently colluding with the money-desperate owners of Air France and other airlines to squeeze another few years of wage-slavery from their pilots, always makes the workers into a cushion for the moneyed class to fall back onto when it trips on the piles of loans it scatters everywhere to decorate its world.

The company's chairman wrote an open letter to the workers, telling them the strike was dangerous because it might destroy the company financially and end up "damaging their careers." But whether workers voicing their legitimate demands through strike action, one of the few weak weapons allowed them, will end up causing them to lose their jobs because of the economic collapse of the industry as a whole is of course an absurd question, since the capitalist system is in fact destroying itself, and always blames it on the workers. Proletarians can only rid themselves of the blame and guilt complexes educated into them by speaking out and revolting, since in their silence only the patronizing, other-blaming voice of the system is heard.