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Greece : general strike

Tuesday 23 March 2010

NOT A STEP BACK
CONTINUOUS STRUGGLE - GENERAL STRIKE

to crash the anti-social security plans of the government

The national strike of 12th December and the crowds of people that swarmed the streets of all the cities in the country were the dynamic expression of the accumulated rage and indignation which constantly grows among the workers, the youth and the poor strata.

The national strike of 12th December and the crowds of people that swarmed the streets of all the cities in the country were the dynamic expression of the accumulated rage and indignation which constantly grows among the workers, the youth and the poor strata.

The cause of this explosion lies not only on the anti-labour plans of the government concerning social security, but also on unemployment, the dissolution of work relations, the low payments, the high cost of goods, the laws that violate democratic rights and personal liberties. This magnificent strike constitutes a new turning – point with upgraded quantitative and qualitative characteristics in the course of the boost of the dispute that the neo-liberal policy has been suffering, in practice; a dispute that was launched with the dockers’ strike and went on with the 4th European Social Forum, the teachers’ strike, the university students’ movement, the decrease of the bourgeois parties influence in the recent parliamentary elections.

Around 2,5 millions people went on strike and several hundred thousands participated in demonstrations in the biggest mobilization concerning a clearly labour issue that has taken place since the political changeover in 1974. Its size becomes even more obvious if we consider that there hadn’t been any concrete draft law, yet, and that this demonstration surpassed, a lot, the respective demonstration against the anti-labour social security measures of minister Giannitsis in 2001. This time, the means of public transport stayed still with the exception of the metro and the underground which operated for some hours in order to facilitate the demonstrators. Ships and docks remained empty of workers; the hospitals accepted only emergencies; public services, banks, several factories, even some private companies and offices had big part of their staff on strike.

Crowds of people of all ages and work factors took part in the demonstrations. In Athens they were more than 150,000, in Thessalonica more than 30,000, while massive demonstrations also took place in Heraklion, Patra, Chania, Janina, Mytilini and all the cities and big towns of the country. The participation of the young workers -the generation of the 700 euros- was also significant and sent a loud message that they won’t compromise with this labour middle ages. More than that, all the workers felt that this strike was “theirs”, even those who didn’t manage to participate in it due to employers’ threats. The day after the strike everybody asked when the next strike was going to take place so that they could take part in it.

As it always happens when the movement is rising, euphoria and creativeness prevailed. In the massive block of Olympic Airways, the employees, dressed in their uniforms, gave the pulse to the whole rally in Athens. Along with them were the dismissed air hostesses carrying an ingenious banner which represented prison bars. At the front of the Public Electricity Service’s (P.E.S.) banner were the aerial workers carrying a ladder which they used to cover with plastic bags the “spy-cameras” across the streets, in a symbolic gesture. Equally creative were the slogans shouted by the demonstrators. Some small incidents of aggressiveness which took place during the march were insignificant and didn’t affect the demonstration. This time, the massive and united strike front for the defence of Social Security crashed the usual trip-ups of the government. The rhetoric that the government used claiming that “a clear popular mandate” was given to it “in order to reform the Social Security system” and the picture of social consent that it tried to draw, by promoting an ostensible dialogue with the unions, fell through. The same happened as far as the recipes of social automatism are concerned, that is, the efforts to divide working class between privileged and underprivileged pensioners. Workers realise more and more the keen social problems and dead-ends, even though militancy and self-organisation have not been stabilized yet. This fact is obvious even at the opinion polls which show that the majority of the population considers the government to be unreliable to handle the issues of Social Security and Olympic Airways. The magnificent strike reinforced workers’ militancy and, as a result, the confrontation on the issue of Social Security is turning into an overall political confrontation. The government was forced to “resign” the minister of employment (Mr. Magginas) the day after the strike, as he was also proved to be engaged in a scandal concerning an illegally built villa that he owned and some workers that he occupied in it without providing them social security. To buy some time, the government put in his place Fani Palli Petralia, a contemporary “Mary Antoinette”, who doesn’t offer any guaranty of being capable of carrying out her difficult mission. More than that, the “vice” of limited self-reliance (152 seats in parliament) and the oncoming elections for the European parliament make an overall anti-labour attack on social security quite difficult. Such an attack may even lead to the fall of the government as it did in the past, when the draft-law of Giannitsis and the law of Reppas on the Social Security system led PA.SO.K to loose power. The trade union bureaucracy, on its part, cannot sell out so easily this struggle because of the massive disapproval of the anti-labour social security measures and of the militancy expressed during the strike. Particularly PA.S.K.E (the trade union fraction of PA.SO.K) is obliged to maintain an oppositional line, not, of course, because it sympathizes with the workers’ needs, but because the deep crisis of PA.SO.K has left no other way for it.

It is certain that Karamanlis’ government will not retreat so easily, as it is obvious by the provocative arrest of the aerial workers of P.E.S. outside the offices of their union, for covering the “spy-cameras”. It will attempt to impose the main axes of the anti-social security reform in order not only to steal the assets of the Social Security Funds and dismantle the Social Security system -actions imposed by the intensity of the economic crisis, the capital, the E.U., and the I.M.F.-, but also to pave the way for a fierce attack in all the open fronts: implementation of the new context-law at universities and promotion of privatization in education, expansion of precarious work and dissolution of work relations, undermining of collective bargains, radical decrease of social expenditure, privatizations (ex. Olympic Airways), shrinkage of democratic rights and personal liberties (cameras, electronic files, chromospheres, new police equipment, etc), as well as the “new” European constitution. That’s why it is possible to have a new anti-social security draft-law introduced in February. That’s why there is no place for calming down.

After the magnificent strike of 12th December we know that we can win. All that is necessary is for our struggle to be continued with equal intensity. The attitude of the Communist Party and its trade union fraction (PAME) to draw lines around it, by calling for separate demonstrations and taking its own spasmodic “initiatives” only to show off its apparatus, has no other effect but to divide workers and undermine the struggle. Through our participation we must try to impose unity, overcome divisions and exclusions, isolate any proposition for compromise. We must organise a tough and continuous resistance in every work place, every union, every school and neighbourhood. We must call for general assemblies everywhere, take decisions for new strikes, occupations and demonstrations. We must push the leaderships of the labour trade unions’ federations to call immediately for a new general strike, with the perspective of a continuous strike as soon as the draft-law is introduced. We must create struggle committees so that the workers can have the first and last word on the course of mobilizations. We must build an all-embracing workers’ front which will be able to resist effectively and will demand:

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