A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #336 - Rebuilding Ukraine: Capital in the starting blocks (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Under the guise of humanism and investments for better days, the race to 
rebuild Ukraine is a hymn to war which perfectly illustrates the very 
foundation of the capitalist: destroying the world in order to better 
exploit it... Until that he destroys himself? Let's not wait for this 
miracle and do the job ourselves. Socialism or barbarism! ----- If the 
current war in Ukraine officially begins on February 24, 2022, it is 
only an extension of the armed conflict with the separatists of Donbass 
supported by Russia, following the annexation of Crimea by Moscow in 
2014 The pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was then 
immediately overthrown by the Euromaidan movement and a pro-Western, 
Petro Poroshenko, succeeded him (1).

In eight years the conflict has left more than 10,000 dead, a million 
displaced and considerable destruction. The "reconstructors" have had a 
lustful gaze on the ruins since the beginning! But Poroshenko is not the 
one they need. His brutal austerity policy and his reputation as a 
corrupt man make him too unpopular to gain acceptance, on top of that, 
of the measures necessary to transform simple interested looks into 
hard-hitting investments. He was beaten in 2019 by the cathodic clown 
Volodymyr Zelensky (2)

On your marks...

Ultra popular, he is the man for the job. The "reconstructors" can 
attack. Barely had Zelensky been elected, the Ukrainian government tried 
to accede to the demands of local employers and multinational companies 
to undertake an ultra-liberal reform of the labor code by denouncing 
half of the conventions that the ILO had ratified in the years that 
followed the declaration of independence of Ukraine in 1991. But the 
country's employees, supported by a certain international union 
solidarity on the part of reformist organizations, temporarily pushed 
the government back.

We will have to wait until 2022 so that, with the civil war becoming a 
war in general with the entry of the Russian army into the Donbass, the 
conditions will be met to finally tackle the reform of legislation 
concerning the modalities of the exploitation of workers.

From the start of the war, due to the war economy and martial law, 
entire sections of labor law were suspended and new regulations were 
decreed (3).

Among the latter, the famous "zero hours" contract, widely used in the 
United Kingdom, at Mac Donald's for example, does not guarantee the 
employee any minimum number of paid hours but requires them to make 
themselves available at any time. Let us also mention the exclusion, 
voted by the Ukrainian parliament, from the coverage of collective 
agreements for 70% of Ukrainian employees: companies with fewer than 250 
employees will therefore be able to directly negotiate the salary 
structure, working hours and conditions or terms of termination of 
contracts.

As always, "war economy" means less a temporary state of exception while 
waiting for "peace" than a restructuring of the economy under the aegis 
of political power and multinationals intended to last beyond the end of 
the war. and to eliminate the archaic aspects of capitalist development.

We could not summarize this project better than Alexander Rodnyansky, 
the president's economic advisor, who declared a few months later in The 
Guardian: "Ukraine must become attractive through a vast privatization 
program and an overhaul of labor law ".

Ready...
The reconstruction project is then estimated at 350 billion dollars. But 
as what determines such an evaluation are not so much the needs 
expressed by the populations as those which are hoped for by the 
globalized economy, they were increased to 500 then 600 billion and 
finally 750 according to the Ukrainian Prime Minister the day before of 
the Lugano conference!
All that remains is to help yourself.

Barely 5 months after the start of the war, Ukraine and Switzerland are 
jointly organizing a conference in Lugano on July 4, 2022. Heads of 
government, ministers representing more or less fifty countries, around 
twenty international organizations are meeting 350 major players from 
the private sector and civil society, to rebuild Ukraine ("better", they 
claim): the public authorities are finally opening the door to the 
private sector! But to dress up this rather banal marriage of 
convenience, both use the distorted image of what was the Marshall Plan 
(4) put in place after the Second World War to "rebuild Europe" and 
whose "progressive minds" like to evoke the social conquests which would 
be the consequence. This is just a fiction to pass the pill.  Indeed, if 
social conquests (creation of works councils, recognition of unions and 
the right to strike, foundation of social security) were conceded by the 
employers, it was following the historic compromise made between 
Gaullists and communists on the basis of the program of the National 
Council of the Resistance (CNR) with the support of the CFTC and the 
CGT, by the provisional governments of General De Gaulle from November 
1944 to January 1946, then of Felix Gouin and Georges Bidault until 
November 1947. From this date the compromise no longer exists, the 
communists are no longer in the governments of Blum and Ramadier.
However, the Marshall Plan only began in 1948 when the working class 
refused to accept the austerity measures implemented to reorganize the 
French economy: insurrectional strikes in the fall of 1947 in many 
sectors, miners in 1948, at Renault, hunger riots, etc.
Consequently, if there can be a resemblance with the Marshall Plan it is 
not with the progressive image that politicians want to give it but with 
the reality of what it was, a machine to defeat the workers' movement ( 
unfortunately represented then by the Communist Party) and to open 
Europe to the American economy via Coca Cola, Marlboro and John Deere.
The numerous documents circulating at the Lugano conference are 
unmistakable: they all spoke of the need for an upgrade (called 
flexibilisation) of labor law to overcome union resistance towards a 
"modern labor market" and reduce the number weeks' notice for dismissal.

A few months later, in December, when 40 million euros had just been 
released by the Swiss group Nestlé for a new factory, and 200 million by 
the Irish construction group Kingspan, the director of "Ukraine Invest" 
announced, during a Franco-Ukrainian conference held in Paris, new 
promises of investments from American and German companies on Ukrainian 
soil.

The following year, on November 14 and 15, 2023, the "Rebuilt Ukraine" 
forum was held in Warsaw, allowing some 300 companies from around fifty 
countries to meet mayors of Ukrainian cities accompanied by various 
financiers. An operation led by the government agency "Ukrain Invest" 
responsible for attracting investors to rebuild towns that are sometimes 
completely destroyed like Bakhmout. For the globalized financial powers, 
it was no longer a question of doing their shopping by sniffing out the 
best deals on offer: a high school here, an aquatic center there, in 
short, reviving or inventing "any place where a future begins." happy ".
At the same time, when the war was raging in the almost completely 
destroyed areas and there was no sign of an end more or less imminent, 
we could be concerned about the risk these investors were taking out of 
solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Rest assured, the "real risk is 
that you miss opportunities in Ukraine" affirmed the director of Ukraine 
Invest. The CEO of BlackRock, the world's leading financial power, Larry 
Fink, confirmed: "Those who truly believe in a capitalist system will 
flood Ukraine with capital[...]. if we want to rebuild Ukraine, it can 
become a beacon to the rest of the world of the power of capitalism."

French companies are also positioning themselves, especially since 
before the war they were the country's largest foreign employer with 
30,000 Ukrainian employees (Eiffage, Airbus, Alstom, Dassault, Thalès, 
Renault, Saint-Gobain, TotalEnergies, Engie, Servier or Sanofi).

The first French beneficiary of the war in Ukraine is undoubtedly 
TotalEnergie. Thanks to the war, gas companies (5) moved from an "energy 
transition" discourse to an "energy security" discourse, pushing 
governments to invest in fossil gas imports and the development of gas 
infrastructure (eight terminals for liquefied gas are under 
construction, and 38 more have been proposed) a Greenpeace investigation 
found. So much so that climate objectives and the energy transition will 
remain propaganda slogans (if they were anything else).

Two other sectors of the French economy are successfully trying to find 
a place in the sun in the "reconstruction" of Ukraine: a conference at 
the French Ministry of the Economy concluded in December 2022 three 
agreements involving the delivery of infrastructure seed and fertilizer 
for Ukraine. As for the first French business delegation to go to 
Ukraine (February 24, 2022), it concerned... cybersecurity companies.

No reconstruction without destruction

"Don't bite the hand that feeds you" states a wise proverb that the 
capitalist powers have adopted. Doing your market in Ukraine for 
reconstruction still implies not drying up the supply of the market, 
namely Russian aggression. For form they shout loud and clear that 
Russia is the enemy, they applaud with both hands the banishment of the 
new tsar and the boycott of the empire of the bear, but in reality it is 
a whole another story. The question in their eyes is how to rebuild 
Ukraine while supporting the Russian economy and circumventing the 
embargo. They succeeded. Only 10% of European companies have initiated a 
withdrawal of their Russian subsidiaries. Among the French, some like 
Bonduelle, Auchan (with products intended for the army) and Leroy-Merlin 
are even accused by kyiv of having taken advantage of the situation to 
develop there! According to the observatory of multinationals 
TotalEnergie (again) whose gas strategy is based on Russia, engaged in 
financial manipulation consisting of depreciating the value of its 
Russian assets and putting its expected profits for 2023 on the accounts 
for 2022 so as to reduce the annual amount of its profits. To conclude 
the article, let us point out Accor, Blablacar, Engie, Sanofi, Veolia 
and Vinci who are not left out in contributing to the Russian war effort.
In short, doing business is on both sides of the front line. And you 
never know, these companies could one day be called upon to "rebuild" 
Russia. You might as well already be well placed there.

Long live the war!

JPD

1. Regarding previous years, from 2000 to 2005 read in CA 
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/ spip.php?article298)
2. read "Ukraine between genocide and Nazification", in Alternative 
Current http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip...).
3. (see http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip...).
(4) In Berlin, in October 2022, representatives of the G7 and the 
European Commission speak of a "new Marshall Plan" for the recovery, 
reconstruction and modernization of Ukraine.
(5) The 5 largest oil and gas companies in the world achieved a record 
profit of 192 billion euros in 2022, half of which was returned to 
shareholders.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4054
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