The people’s demand, here and now is: Give money for wages and pensions! No sacrifices for their profits and wars! Provide money for healthcare, education, social welfare, wages and pensions — we will keep repeating this message.
With the KKE at the forefront, alongside the workers’, farmers’, and broader popular movements, all the popular strata of our country, take to the streets of struggle!”
Giannis Tasioulas, President of the Federation of Construction Workers, was the keynote speaker at the nationwide popular rally at the Thessaloniki International Fair, highlighting the following, among other things:
“Now the people are speaking. The thousands of workers who are here today. The militant farmers, the youth, the retirees, the women. All of us standing united against them and the system of exploitation that is putting our lives at grave risk and leading us into dead ends. The message we are sending is clear: Fight until the final victory. No sacrifices for their war and profits. Money for wages, education, and healthcare. The needs of the many—the working people—must come before the profits of the few.
We are showing the “red card” to past and present rulers, forces and parties who are responsible for hundreds of anti-labor laws, excessivetaxation, the erosion of working-class income and rights and the loss of hard-won gains—all to serve the interests of the few.
For us to win, capital and the bourgeois state must pay the price. They must lose, suffering daily defeats by the struggles of the workers’ and people’s movement. A nationwide workers’ tide must rise up against them, one that will grow ever stronger within the major workplaces, in industries, on construction sites, and in large production facilities. A movement that will escalate the struggle and impose its just cause by confronting and overthrowing the exploitative system. (…)
At the opposite extreme of all of them stands our world—the world of labor and struggle. The great workers’ and people’s force that will leave its mark so that the many—the working people and wage earners—can live as we truly deserve, in line with the potential of our era..Through our struggle, we will sweep them away. We will overthrow the decay of their system. Hope lies in the struggle for a world without exploitation, poverty, wars, and displacement. Today, we workers have immense potential to emerge victorious in the war against capital, governments and the political and union forces that support them.
We are intensifying our struggles across all sectors, fighting for collective bargaining agreements and health and safety measures in the workplace. We are utilising every available means and employing every form of action, including mobilisations, workplace informational campaigns and organising strikes in various sectors and large companies, with the aim of achieving positive results and gains. We are preparing for a militant escalation with a nationwide strike.”
As noted by the KKE’s news portal, 902.gr, this massive rally leaves a legacy for the future, for the next major struggles. In the workplaces, for the signing of collective bargaining agreements, for health and safety measures. For the escalation of the struggles, for the formation of a broad workers’ and people’s movement with common goals, for the overthrow of the politics of profit and war. For an alliance of the working class with the self-employed, the poor farmers, the youth, and the women from working-class families".