CSAN Principles

CSAN exists exclusively for the coordination of workers across sectors in common defense of our standard of living and working conditions — our shared class interest. The bosses’ constant attacks can only be countered through class struggle organized through collective bodies such as trade unions. However, the union movement today is in sharp decline, in no small part due to the prevailing policies of class-collaborationist unionism. CSAN is not itself a union. It is a network of workers who seek to strengthen and grow the union movement, returning it to principles of militant class unionism.

Strike Power

The exploitation of workers’ labor provides the basis for all profits. The organized and collective refusal to work — the strike — remains the most powerful weapon of the working class in our shared defense. We oppose all “no strike” clauses, and other confines within the existing trade union legal framework which attempt to limit workers’ ability to strike. Effective defense of picket lines is crucial for successful strike action. Picket lines mean do not cross!

Solidarity Action

The prevailing unionism encourages workers to think and act only in defense of their own narrow interests. But workers are most powerful when we act as a united class. We are committed to advocating within our unions for cross-workplace strike and picket solidarity, and to coordinating strikes or demonstrations in the same time and location whenever possible. Through experiences of shared action and struggle, we develop class consciousness which moves beyond our individual workplaces. Our individual workplace struggles are generalized into struggles of the working class itself.

Class Unity

We advance unifying, class-based demands (such as wage increases), and oppose initiatives that divide us (such as the common practice in many unions of offering new workers reduced strike pay). We support open and transparent bargaining. We reject bargaining methods that put inordinate power into the hands of paid union
officials. We reject any stated end to a strike until proposals and tentative agreements have been shared and voted on by membership.

Class Struggle; Not Electoralism

In unions, our power lies in our level of collective organization and capacity to strike. The threat of a mass general strike is the leverage we need to win major concessions from the capitalist class. To win on demands such as universal healthcare, we must grow and strengthen the union movement through class struggle; not
divert our resources to electoralist tactics and capitalist political parties. Tactics such as funding lobbying, endorsing politicians running for office, or organizing ballot initiatives all divert critical resources away from unionization efforts, cross-workplace solidarity initiatives and strike funds.

Internationalism

The working class is international. Every aspect of our economic reality is produced within a vast global economy. To win, we must organize beyond national boundaries on multiple points of the production chain. International economic crisis shake the entire world, pushing nation-states controlled by the capitalist class to the brink of global imperialist war. We must unite with workers across the world to in our mutual defense and to prevent the coming cataclysm of World War III.