Friday, January 12, 2018

Hands Off the Right of Strike: Militant demonstrations across Greece against Government, EU and Capitalists

Militant strike demonstrations took place earlier on Friday in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities in Greece, as thousands of workers gave a decisive response against the antipeople-antiworkers' plans of the government, the EU and the big capital. 

In Athens, the demonstrators gathered at Omonoia square and marched through the center's major streets. The KKE General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas attended the rally, while the demonstrators announced a resolution regarding the prosecution of the palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi by the Israeli authorities.

The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), which leads powerful class-oriented trade unionist activities against the new bill submitted in the Parliament by the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government, commented:

PAME welcomes the workers who went on strike across Greece and defied employers’ intimidations and pressures in the workplaces. The workers who overcame the undermining of the strike by the unions controlled by the employers and the government. The workers who massively participated in the strike rallies Regional Trade Union Centers, National Federations and Industrial Unions, against the new antiworkers’ measures of the SYRIZA-ANEL Government that were submitted to Parliament today.
With today's strike, a clear message was sent that we will not Surrender our trade union rights and freedoms and the right to strike to the employers and their state.
PAME's big strike demonstrations across Greece were the continuation of the militant actions of the last period. They were massive and militant mobilizations against the antiworkers’ government, which along with the other bourgeois political parties have voted the memorandums, against the dirty role of their forces in the trade union movement. That's why they attacked with lies against PAME, against the class-oriented movement.
Anti-workers measures are prerequisites for the growth of their profits and needs, for the capitalist development. That is why the capitalists directed the measures to be brought by the government as "long-term demands of the business community", demanding them to vote in favour of the bill. Together with them are their people in the trade union movement, the right hand of the bosses. GSEE-ADEDY-members of the ETUC in Greece - fought furiously against the proposals for strike, they made every effort in order to pass the bill in silence without any resistance. Today, they did no tstrike and went to work.
We continue our fight! We will not stop!
On Monday 15/1 day of voting in the Parliament, PAME calls workers, unemployed, retired, youth in big Demonstration.