Working, unemployed, self-employed women, young, agricultural and economic refugee women!

In present-day circumstances, when capital and its political representatives are taking your rights away one by one, there is no room for relaxation or for false expectations.

• The plutocrats who have been enriching themselves from our sweat all these years

• The governments of PASOK and New Democracy, LAOS and the EU have been feeding the industrialists, the bankers, the big hotel owners, the big traders and shipowners with their policies all these years

• Pliant trade union leaderships have been supporting these policies through their practices at the expense of the working class and the popular strata

• They support equality only on paper while, in real life, they impose cruel inequalities on the women of the working and popular strata

All of them try to persuade us that the situation we are living under at present is a one-way street: i.e. being unemployed, being forced to pay for our Health, Social Welfare and Education, having our salaries and pensions cut, closing down our shops which are drowned in debt, selling our land because we cannot afford to work on it, young couples choosing not to set up a family for fear of future insecurity, having young women discharged from their work because they are pregnant, working whenever and for however long we are needed by the employer, for whatever wages it suits him to pay.

They want to persuade us that we are all responsible for the debts and the deficit that they have created over the years by their own policies.

They all want to persuade us to bow our heads, to make sacrifices in order to get out of the capitalist and economic crisis which has indubitably been caused by the monopolies, whose pockets are bursting at the seams with their profits.

This is their one-way street.

Working, unemployed, young women!

Don’t be fooled. There is a way out.

For us, impoverishment and insecurity do not constitute a one-way street. The only way out for us is to fight against this policy that wants us to be modern slaves subjugated to the interests of the employers, to the laws of capitalist profiteering. The only way out for us is to organize our class struggle, to clash, to conflict and to overthrow this system. Our only way out is through a struggle leading to a development that has at its heart our present-day needs, a development in which the wealth we produce now for the benefit of a handful of capitalists will be owned by the people. This development will secure a dignified life for us, the life that we and our families deserve.

There is only one historic dilemma for the people, for women, for the youth. Either you accept subjugation or you undertake to organize the struggle and a counter-attack leading to final victory. We are not alone today, there is a Social Alliance of All Workers Militant Front (PAME), Panhellenic Antitrust Coalition of Tradesmen – Craftsmen (PASEVE), All Farmers Militant Coalition (PASY), Students´ Front of Struggle (MAS), Federation of Women in Greece (OGE), that adds strength to our strength. This Social Alliance expresses the unity of the working class and all the popular strata. It puts forward demands that cut like a knife deep through the causes of this crisis, demands that are above managerial logistics and stand firm against the interests of the monopolies, because the more profit the multinationals make, the more the people loses.

COME WITH US – TAKE THIS MATTER INTO YOUR OWN HANDS.

Salaried women, unemployed, young working women, self-employed and agricultural workers!

JOIN YOUR Trade Union, PAME, the Committes of PASEVE, PASY, MAS, OGE

No struggle has positive results without women’s participation and without the cooperation of the working people’s movement.

COME WITH US – TAKE PART IN THE STRUGGLE FOR:

• Permanent and stable work for everybody

• A 7-hour working day

• A 5-day working week – a 35-hour working week

• A minimum monthly salary of € 1.400

• No abolition of the Sunday holiday

• No abolition of collective bargaining labour contracts

• Sign branch collective bargaining labour contracts that will satisfy our present-day needs.

• Pensions at the age of 60 for men and at the age of 55 for women. Abolish all anti-social security laws.

• Essential protection of motherhood for salaried, self-employed and agricultural women workers throughout the period of pregnancy and nursing.

• A system of Health and Welfare that is exclusively public and free

• Free state-run nurseries and kindergartens, family planning centres

• Totally public and free Education

• Protection for the unemployed

• Unemployment benefit equal to 80% of the minimum salary.

• Periods of unemployment to be included within the years necessary to qualify for a pension.

This year’s International Women’s Day is a stage for escalating the struggle against the government, the IMF, the EU and the parties of the plutocracy. We honor the struggles of the past and we will continue in the same vein until victory. Let our future struggles, and our present struggles, become even greater, more dynamic, and let them lead to better achievements. Let our struggles open the road to the future that we deserve, and that our children deserve. Let it be a future without exploitation of man by man.