Rui Costa Pimenta: CUT can no longer wait to call a general strike.

247 - Amid the truckers' strike and now the oil workers' strike, the Workers' Cause Party (PCO), presided over by Rui Costa Pimenta, argues that the Unified Workers' Central (CUT) should call a general strike in the country. "The truckers' strike serves as an impetus for the Unified Workers' Central (CUT) to call, once again, a national general strike, this time for an indefinite period," states a note from the party.

"Given the fragility of the coup plotters, who usurped the government to act against the workers and all the Brazilian people, it is necessary to seize the opportunity and prevent the coup from continuing to act against the working class. It is necessary to seize the opportunity to defeat the coup and neoliberalism. To do this, it is necessary to generalize the strike," the text, released on [website/platform name], also says. PCO website.

Read the full text below:

The CUT (Unified Workers' Central) should call for a general strike now; the time is now.

Despite the massive campaign by the pro-coup press to end the truckers' strike, the mobilization continues, with thousands opposing the Temer government's maneuvers to pretend that it has met all the demands of the category, when this does not reflect reality at all.

After a seven-day strike, Brazil began Monday virtually paralyzed due to fuel shortages and the threat of the strike expanding to include oil workers, van drivers, and many other sectors.

The truckers' strike is serving as an impetus for the Unified Workers' Central (CUT) to call, once again, for a national general strike, this time indefinitely. The truckers have entered into a direct confrontation with a neoliberal policy dictated by imperialism against all Brazilian workers. They are demanding a reduction in the price of all fuels. Practically no one in Brazil opposes this demand, with the exception of a handful of speculators, imperialism, the bourgeois press, and its venal journalists. This demand can only be truly met with the defeat of the coup.

The truckers' strike puts the coup government in check. On the one hand, the government serving Shell and Chevron cannot give in to the truckers' demands. This would displease the foreigners who promoted the coup that overthrew the PT (Workers' Party). On the other hand, the right wing is failing to confront the truckers head-on. This situation exposes the fragility of the coup-installed and illegitimate government, a government without support and incapable of acting in the face of the crisis it has created.

Given the fragility of the coup plotters, who usurped the government to act against the workers and all the Brazilian people, it is necessary to seize the opportunity and prevent the coup from continuing to act against the working class. It is necessary to seize the opportunity to defeat the coup and neoliberalism. To do this, it is necessary to generalize the strike. Many sectors are already at a standstill due to a lack of conditions to continue working.

This is a favorable situation to carry out a strike that encompasses all organized sectors and to call on workers and youth to take to the streets throughout the country.

Starting with oil workers, moving on to public transportation, and all the way to factories, workers have a chance to inflict a harsh defeat on the right wing and eliminate the coup government once and for all.

For this to happen, the largest workers' organization in Brazil, the CUT, needs to call on its thousands of unions to mobilize and declare a general strike.

In addition to supporting the demands of the truck drivers and oil workers, it is necessary to highlight the essential struggle for the nationalization of oil (Brazil's oil wealth for the Brazilian people), the re-nationalization of Petrobras (100% state-owned, under workers' control), and the end of the coup regime to pull the country out of chaos, with freedom for Lula, annulment of the impeachment (Out with Temer and return of the president elected by the people, Dilma Rousseff), and the holding of free and democratic elections, with Lula as president!