Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Greek workers in the streets: Trade Unions call for National General Strike on May 30th

Under the slogan "Your development crushes our life! Struggle, organization and and counterattack", the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) calls the working people of Greece to participate actively in the 24-hour General Strike on Wednesday 30th of May. 

Labour Unions, students and womens' associations, peace committees and other groups of the class-based movement call for mass participation in the national strike. In Athens, the demonstrators will gather at Omonoia square at 10.30 am, while numerous strike rallies have been scheduled in many cities across Greece. 

On Wednesday, May 16, the Secretariat of Attica of PAME called an Assembly of the Unions of Athens for the preparation of the National General Strike of May 30. The Secretariat noted:
“In the strike on May 30, we need to raise the flag of our own needs. The demands that meet the modern needs of the working class and the people. Let us take another step forward in the common action of the working class and the popular strata….
In order to be able to meet the requirements of preparing the strike and mobilization on May 30 we need to work on three basic conditions as broadly as possible within the working class and the grassroots:
First: We have a real responsibility to reveal the character of the antiworkers' measures and of the capitalist development promised by the SYRIZA - ANEL government and the Associations of the big business groups. To prevent their plans for broad parts of the workers and the popular strata supporting the objectives of capital. To fight decisively the argument of the lesser evil and the climate of complacency that is a poison for the people….
Second: This discussion must be opened broadly within the working class, in the workplaces. The trade unions that we are here and those who are in agreement, we need to organize the discussion well, revealing not only the policies of the government and the business groups, but also the efforts made by the unions controlled by the Government and the capitalists, to promote this policy within the working class.
The GSEE and ADEDY-ETUC Members in Greece- have huge responsibilities for the condition in the trade union movement, for the fact that in large parts of the workers is cultivated the argument of the lesser evil, of "inefficiency of the struggle". Their May 1st “gathering” in Athens, of less than 90 people, in contrast to the dozens of thousands of workers who participated in the rally of PAME, show that they have no validity to the workers as defenders of workers’ rights….
And the third basic condition. To organize as much as possible a wide campaign within the working class based on the demands that today can block, even temporarily, some of the negative consequences of anti-popular policy…
May 30th must be the day when our people as a whole will protest against the policy of the government and monopoly groups…. At the same time, we must fight against Greece's involvement in imperialist plans and the contradictions that are being developed in the wider region by NATO, the EU, Russia and other imperialist powers. To fight against the bases and the presence of Greek military forces outside the borders of the country….At the core of our own demands are the needs and interests of the working class and the popular strata. They are demands that contradict the strategy of the capital and the EU, the government policy. On this ground and through the strengthening of our joint action, a true social alliance will develop of those affected by the policy of capitalist barbarity and monopoly groups. In this territory will mature demands and claims that strike at the root of this system of injustice and exploitation, of war and refugee.”