„FIGHTING DAY IS EVERY DAY“

WILLI MERNYI IN CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT MISIK
"FIGHTING DAY IS EVERY DAY"

1 May is the day of labour, the day of struggle for the working classes. Since time immemorial, since 1 May was first celebrated in Vienna in 1890. In recent years, we have been shocked to see how relevant the struggles of the past have become again today. Selfishness crept into our societies with the neoliberal dogma. The working classes were treated as disposable, as if they were interchangeable. Labour rights were presented as obstacles to „flexibility“. Labour markets were thrown into disarray. In addition to reasonably secure standard employment relationships, increasingly precarious employment relationships emerged: Part-time and working poor, jobs you can't survive on, new sectors of low-wage workers whose rights now have to be tenaciously enforced. Since the start of the pandemic, much has become visible that was previously known but tolerated for far too long.

It's time for more solidarity. It is not investment bankers and busybodies who have kept the country going, but the workers in care and healthcare, in supermarkets, in industry and factories, the people who collect the rubbish, the lorry drivers. The working classes have earned respect, more security in life and a fair share of prosperity. Every day is a day of struggle for this, not just on a public holiday. Robert Misik talks to Willi Mernyi, the cool, eloquent Executive Secretary of the ÖGB and Managing Director of the Social Democratic Trade Unionists, about the situation of the working classes, what holds them together today and how more justice can be fought for.

Willi Mernyi, was born in Vienna in 1968 and has been campaigning for social justice and against marginalisation since the age of 17. He is Executive Secretary of the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB), Chairman of the Austrian Mauthausen Committee and a member of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) Public Council

 Robert Misik, Author and journalist