The struggle of the steel workers brought in today’s conditions the valuable lessons of the labour movement history, which is full of sacrifices. Each time of their struggle was a significant lesson for the working class in order to draw useful conclusions for the class struggle. 

• It taught heroism and self-sacrifice! The strikers steel workers had to face not only Manesis (the owner of the Greek steel industry), but also all their exploiters, the political personnel of the ruling class, the repression mechanisms. They showed exemplary strength and faith to the right of the working class, all this period, against gods and demons.
• It taught the character of class solidarity! It made the seemingly impossible, possible because it was achieved workers to strike for nine months in order for their colleagues who were dismissed to return to their job. It showed that workers’ solidarity is an irreplaceable weapon of the class confrontation against capital. Comradeship was cultivated against the common enemy; life itself tested the slogan “one for all and all for one”. 
• It highlighted the content of the multiform conflict! This struggle was developed against the multiform attack of the employer, against fatalism and compromise. It helped to discern the difficulties that has the path of insubordination and disobedience against the laws that make people’s lives hell. The slogan “all Greece must become like the steel industry” shook several times the strike demonstrations against the brutal policy.
• It highlighted the need of the organized struggle! The role of the trade union as the center of the struggle was highlighted, away from the grasp of the employers and the governmental trade unionism. Through initiatives and the formation of committees of support and organization of the struggle. Through decisions of the general assemblies and open procedures.
• It manifested the unstopping struggle that exists between capital and labour. The ones who are the real producers of wealth were revealed; the slogan “worker you can be without bosses” took life. It revealed the life which is hidden behind the hell of the chimneys, the parasitic life of industrialists with their villas and yachts acquired by the sweat, blood and lives of workers.

The struggle of the steel workers suspended, even temporarily, the tactics and the broader plans of industrialists. The strike began at the time when the directives of job rotation and of the most generalized attack were ready, waiting in the drawers of several factories.

• It verified that only the line of class struggle, the conflict with the employers, government and the imperialist organizations can give such struggles. In contrast to the line of social dialogues, social partnership, the line of compromise and of the supposed realism, that not only does not break the aggressiveness of the capitalists, but on the contrary turned the trade unions into their puppets. To this direction, the struggle of the steel workers was valuable because it helped to strengthen the belief of the need to throw away from the workers the chains of the governmental and employers’ trade unionism. The struggle of the steel workers challenged and opposed to the so-called realism of the governmental and employers’ trade unionism. In these circumstances, this struggle pushed employers’ Federations and Regional Trade Union Centres to go on strikes and work stoppages.  

The steel workers that gave this struggle
and all of us who supported it, we are proud

Their raised fists for nine months
Will be the power for the struggles that will follow.

 The General Assembly of the Trade Union of workers in the steel industry considered that now is the right time to complete this great strike. The conditions created – the immediate intervention of the government led by the Prime Minister and the choice to break the struggle in order to send a strong message to the whole working class and to those who struggle, the permanent presence of the repressive mechanism etc – imposed the suspension of the struggle to prevent its degeneration, as the employers and the state that serves them, aimed. The trade union can face the new situation united, organized and collectively in the same way it faced dozens of difficult and crucial times all this period. 

The steadfast position of the strikers steel workers forced the class enemy to leave aside the appearances and use their last weapon, the repressive mechanisms. Thus, this struggle also revealed the brutal face of the “salvation” co-government to the Greek people. It showed to the workers that as long as they will not subjugated to those plans that want them impoverished for the benefit of the profits of the plutocracy, the bigger the attack will be launched against them with the most barbaric and brutal way. So, this struggle makes us to consider the need for rapid development of a powerful labour movement which will be ready to face the multiform attack of the capital – E.U. and will be capable to crush every repressive mechanism.

The workers of the steel industry are already winners.

The victory of the struggle of the steel workers is reflected on the tremendous legacy that leaves for the future. The seed planted will grow in the “new steel industries” that will spring up in the near future, as a new storm of anti-labour measures is coming.
Some people who wore the mask of the fighter in some cases and in some other played the role of a firefighter against the radicalization of the labour consciousness, looking for flaws in the strike struggle all this period, trying to isolate and stain the trade union of workers in the steel industry, they are now trying to pretend the “after-Christ prophets”. But the struggles are not a clock, ticking, knowing what will happen in the next second.   
The struggle of the steel workers showed that when the working class decides to resist, no gear turns. When the furnace of the factory remains cold, every Manesis is “nothing”.  This struggle highlighted the inexhaustible and hidden power that workers have if they believe in their power and decide to fight.
Life itself has, already, marked this struggle in the lightened, hard class clashes, a small brick in the long lasting struggle of the workers against their exploiters.

July 2012