The massive participation of private and public sector workers in the 17 January srtrike called by the Greek union federation PANATIKI showed the working class is willing to resist the most barbaric attacks on their working and living conditions in 50 years.
Greek workers face attacks that the President of the Euro group, Jean-Claude Juncker, has predicted “will exceed every imagination”: further redundancies, unpaid work, destruction of collective bargaining agreements and pro-worker legislation, reductions in wages and pensions, cuts to health and education.
As unemployment fast approaches one million [population of Greece = 11 million], workers are going on temporary contracts of five months and monthly incomes of around 625 euros — an equivalent to 223 euros per month over the course of a year!
A large number of local private sector unions participated in the 17 January strike. Due to the efforts of the radical left within the rank and file movement (SYRIZA, ANTARSYA), workers from the public sector joined the strike.
A four-hour stoppage of the teachers’ unions (OLME, DOE) enabled them to participate in the strike. The two-day strike of media workers and the participation of students further empowered the strike. A lot of rank and file unions from the private sector participated in PAME’s block, demonstrating in Athens (PAME is the trade union front of the Greek Communist Party KKE). Unfortunately, KKE, in the name of “revolutionary purity”, demonstrated separately.
KKE’s stance was yet again a barrier against the willingness of the working class to form a united front to fight the attacks.
The tone of the strike was set by workers and workplaces that have been on continuous strike and in occupation in the last months. The workers of Chalivourgia (three months in occupation), of Loukisa (almost two months in occupation), of 3E, of ALTER, of Eleytherotypia are showing that only uncompromising, militant, continuous occupations and strikes can defeat the government.
On 17 January delegates from different workplaces, including the Chalivourgia workers, met the Minister of Labour. They demanded Chalivourgia bosses reinstate sacked workers. But the government said they cannot intervene in an open economy. At the end of the meeting the rank-and-file leader of Chalivourgia, Sifonios, spoke to other strikers: “The working class does not have any alternative. We have to escalate our struggle till they withdraw their anti-working class measures. It is imperative for every workplace to take industrial action. Let’s turn all Greece into Chalivourgia!”
Loukisa (aluminium factory): The workers of Loukisa have been in occupation since 5 December. Their employers owe them 10 months’ back wages.
About a year ago the employers stopped paying wages. Yet the company carried on with big projects inside and outside Athens. Since then they have tried to intimidate the workers by (unsuccessfully) trying to send in sub-contracted workers as scabs or by threatening to sack all the workers.
A couple of weeks ago they offered the workers 50,000 euros, a fraction of the unpaid wages. The workers decided to carry on their occupation.
A similar situation is being experienced by all workers in the aluminium industry. The rank and file in the industry are organising and coordinating their struggle. Two weeks ago aluminium industry workers demonstrated and handed a statement of defiance to the Ministry of Labour.
3E (printing company): Printing workers at 3E have been in occupation over unpaid wages. 3E’s work is important; the company has the monopoly to publish school books. When the workers decided to organise and demand their unpaid wages the employer sacked several workers.
Instead of being intimidated they organised a six-hour stoppage. The employer then shut down the factory, cut off the electricity supply, lied saying that the factory was under occupation, and blamed the workers for the company’s financial difficulties.
Media workers: The media industry is experiencing a double crisis: one due to the economic crisis and another arising from the development of the internet and changes in the way information is gathered and shared.
Employers have escalated attacks on media workers incuding redundancies, reduction and non-payment of wages, destruction of collective bargaining agreements, and use of a clause in bankruptcy law which allows them to dodge legal obligations towards employees.
The employers take for granted that ESHEA (the media workers’ trade union) should accept a 20% reduction in wages and no guarantees against redundancies.
Media workers participated massively in a two-day strike (17/18 January). In individual sectors militant strikes are taking place.
In the vanguard are the continuous strikes of the journalists and media workers at ALTER (TV station) and ERT (Greek BBC) and on Eleytherotypia (liberal newspaper).
The ALTER workers have not been paid for over 18 months. Their employer has paid off his debt to the state but refuses to pay wages. The ALTER workers have been occupying the station since last autumn.
Within the context of escalating workers’ struggles, control of the media is very important. That is why the confrontation between the government employers and the media workers is expected to be very tough.
Blueprints for a media under workers’ control, in contrast to the mainstream media, are being prepared at ALTER, where the workers are in charge of their channel and news programmes. They frequently interview Chalivourgia workers.
The media workers of ERT are public sector workers, affected by the changes to government salary schemes (up to 40% reductions in wages). The ERT workers are in the third month of rolling strikes.
Eleytherotypia workers have been unpaid since July. The employer has experienced cash flow problems, and applied for a loan to the banks to pay wages. After the intervention of the government and other rival publishers, the banks refused to provide Eleytherotypia with a loan.
The reasons are purely political: Eleytherotypia has carried anti-establishment political opinions.
Chalivourgia (steel factory): The 400 workers of “Elliniki Chalivourgia” are now in their 12th week of an heroic strike against poverty, redundancies and casualisation of work. The metal workers rejected the employer’s proposal to reduce working hours to five hours a day, and impose a 40% reduction in wages.
Their message is clear: “We are not returning to a dangerous job that places our lives at risk for the pittance of 500 euros per month and without our 34 sacked work colleagues being reinstated.”
The struggle of the metal workers has taken on a huge symbolism for the entire working class struggle.
This was the first private company to make use of all the recent anti-working class legislation. It is the first private company to introduce draconian conditions in an attempt to replace jobs with stable and secure monthly wages, and welfare and insurance benefits, with casualised labour. These bosses want to blaze a trail for others.
On 18 January workers in Volos and Velestino (factories also owned by Chalivourgia boss, Manesis) went on solidarity strike in defence of the Chalivourgia workers.
The capitalist bosses are united against the working class.
Two options are “offered” to the working class: get sacked or accept reduced wages and dismantling of rights and conditions such as the right to job security and full-time, permanent employment. The plan is simply to make workers pay for the bosses’ crisis.
When the crisis is over the workers will be left with poverty level wages, precarious working conditions and no safety net, un-unionised and defeated as a class.
The coalition government is providing full back-up to the capitalist employers and bankers; handing over to them cash that comes from the Greek taxpayers; writing off their debts; and refusing to intervene against the employers who are terrorising their workers.
The governing parties PASOK, Nea Dimokratia and LAOS, despite their small-print disagreements, are united in backing all these measures.
But the class struggle is cutting through the whole of Greek society. The winter of discontent is not over, it is just starting.
It is the role and duty of the revolutionary left to place itself in the vanguard of struggles against the destitution of the working class, with a revolutionary anti-capitalist manifesto. It must build a united front and consistently revolutionary culture.
The left must connect up these struggles, with the strategic aim of the revolutionary overthrow of the rotten capitalist system.
