CALL OF THE ORGANIZATIONS

OF THE CLASS-ORIENTED TRADE UNION MOVEMENT

TO THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS TRADE UNION ORGANIZATIONS

Working women and men,

Dear colleagues,

We call for a general uprising, organization and concentration of forces so that we come out as winners in the war that capital, government and Troika have declared

The hundreds of trade union organizations (Federations, Regional Trade Union Centers, First – Degree Trade Unions and Committees of workers) that form PAME, which leads the struggle for the reconstruction of the trade union movement and its release from the weights of the employers’ and governmental trade unionism, we address a call of rally and common struggle to all the workers of our country.

The government, the E.U. have equipped the employers and the big capital as a whole with a brutal antilabour legal framework, which will be increased with new anti-labour legislation in the next period.

The capitalist crisis and its consequences bring tens of thousands of new workers into a state of long-term unemployment, poverty and degradation.

The result will be a merciless war without a time limit launched by the employers, who want to eliminate every labour right and conquest, to reduce as much as they can the salaries, day-wages and the fundamental social rights in Social Security, pensions, Health, Welfare, protection from labour accidents and occupational risks.

The factories, construction places, offices, schools, clinics and all the working places will be transformed – and this does not involve any element of exaggeration – in medieval, anti-labour galleys, if we will not be organized and will not organize our struggle.

The workers will work according to the profitability and the plans of monopolies, big capital, whenever the employer wants, the days – hours the employer wants and they will be paid as much as the employer wants. The major victims of this brutal attack are the women and our children.

• No worker should be alone, isolated and unprotected. We must respond with a strong organization at every working place, with mass registrations in the class-oriented trade unions, with good organization of the Trade Unions, with leaderships who will be committed to our interests and not to the employers and to every government.

• We must respond with a unified action in every sector, with mutual support and solidarity among the workers of all sectors, in the working places and the neighbourhoods. Class-oriented unity in every sector, factory, in every enterprise against employers, government, E.U. and subjugated trade union leaderships.

• Every employer who has already reduced wages, changed the working hours, abolished the sectoral agreements or attempts to do so, must be faced by all the Trade Unions of the sector, all the workers of the area where the factory / the working place is located, by all the workers as a total. We must apply in our everyday life the motto “all for one and one for all”.

In this war that will be generalized and escalated there can be an effective defense and a plan of victorious counterattack can be ensured by workers, the working class and the other popular strata of our country.

Dear fellow workers,

Only such a class-oriented trade union movement, as PAME forces propose, can lead an action plan like this, an action plan of workers’ defense and counterattack.

PAME through its actions and experience and particularly due to its demands and consistency is ready to give all its forces for such a capable and reliable trade union movement.

The majorities of governmental and employers’ trade unionism in private and public sector (GSEE – ADEDY) neither want nor can respond to this task. They were and currently are one of the most active parts of the parties which have applied in the past and currently apply these brutal policies. These leaderships are in their majorities an organized bureaucracy that has close relations with the employers. They are the labour aristocracy which has got the interest and the aim to maintain the miserable situation that exists in our trade union movement.

They call us to correct the PASOK (socialdemocrats) and its government, they promise us a better N.D. (conservatives) and a supposedly less antilabour E.U.

In conditions of capitalist crisis their attitude, their role is equally dangerous as it was the previous years that they ideologically and organizationally disarmed the working class.

All these who claim that the overthrow of the working relations as a whole and the return to medieval working conditions are imposed to save Greece from the deficits and debts, are liars, hypocrites and the deliberately deceive people. These measures serve the big capital, monopolies and multinationals. They are pre-planned many years ago by E.U., the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, bankers, shipowners who now promote them under the pretext of debts and deficits. It is the result of the unified strategy that they have elaborated all together, within the E.U. framework. These are not measures of occupation, as several people and the Holy Synod of the Greek Church claim, but they are measures that serve the bourgeois class, the big capital.

Dear co-workers,

We say no. Neither it can, nor should it be our future and perspective.

We call you to think and all together discuss. What could be the future, the way out of this situation? Will we sacrifice the rights of our children and our own for a development which will again be the beginning of an even worse capitalist crisis? Will our struggles, future and perspective be running in defending ourselves from the repeated antilabor salvos of the forces of capital?

We have the power to change this situation, because ultimately we are the vast majority and we produce all the wealth.

The creation of a massive, vigorous and well organized movement of resistance is urgent to:

• Prevent the hit and dissolution of the sectoral Collective Labour Agreements, the reduction of salaries and day-wages.

• Prevent the dismissals, the changes of working hours, the uninsured work.

• Prevent the abolition of Heavy and Unwholesome Occupations, the conversion of hospitals into predatory mechanisms at the expense of the health of the people.

• Prevent the generalized privatization and the utilization of the entire public wealth and infrastructure by the capital (mass transportation means, energy, telecommunications, ports, forests, beaches etc.)

• Defend the unemployed people and their families from the predatory of the banks, from those who attempt to cut their electricity, telephone, from those who refuse to treat them because the do not have stamps.

We can, because there are the forces to do so, the forces that can and want to unite the working class, the self-employed people, the small-skilled tradesmen and craftsmen, the poor and medium-skilled farmers, the youth and women in a unified, popular socio-political front against the capital and its parties, imperialism and its mechanisms.

It is the PAME (All Workers Militant Front), PASEVE (Panhellenic Antitrust Coalition of Tradesmen – Craftsmen), PASY (All Farmers Militant Coalition), MAS (Students’ Front of Struggle), OGE (Federation of Women in Greece) that have already created the seed of this unified social front, the small brooks which we will make huge rivers that will bring forces in the large popular front.

Our “prize”, the “prize” for the people will be a centrally planned economy, having the basic and concentrated means of production as popular property that will operate and produce under our own labour control, having as a sole criterion to satisfy the popular needs.

We call you in this way, in the way of the necessary defence and resistance to the war launched by the capital, its parties and the Troika. We call you, all the workers and trade unions, in the way of counterattack and perspective to offer your support.

In this way the sacrifices that are needed, are worthwhile and well spent.

We suggest (our organizations are being prepared for it) to continue our action through a unified strike response to the capital, government for the above mentioned issues, in the end of January or in the beginning of February.

The Regional Trade Union Centers of:

AGRINIO – ARTA – DODECANESE ISLANDS – ZAKYNTHOS – THESPROTIA – KEFALLONIAS & ITHACA – LARISSA – LAVRION – LEFKADA – MEGARA – NAOUSSA – PALLESVIAKO – SAMOS – FOKIDA.

The Federations:

THE FEDERATION OF CONSTRUCTION WORKERS AND ALLIED OCCUPATIONS OF GREECE –

FEDERATION OF WORKERS IN TEXTILE & CLOTHING INDUSTRIES –

FEDERATION OF WORKERS IN PRINTING INDUSTRIES AND PAPER OF GREECE –

FEDERATION OF WORKERS IN DRUG & ALLIED INDUSTRIES OF GREECE –

PAN-HELLENIC FEDERATION OF ACCOUNTANTS –

PAN-HELLENIC FEDERATION OF WORKERS AND EMPLOYERS IN MILK, FOOD & DRINKS –

FEDERATION OF HOSPITAL’S EMPLOYEES –

FEDERATION OF WORKERS IN BOTTLING COMPANIES-

FEDERATION OF PENSIONERS