The Regional Trade Union of Larisa expresses its solidarity with the Roofers Local 36 of Los Angeles, USA, the workers and the unionist Cliff Smith, the Business Manager of the union.
We condemn the practices of the AFL-CIO, against our colleague and his union, which with threats and blackmail, with slander seek to put a brake on the action of the union. Defamatory attacks on individuals and the imposition of demands of others, other than our union members, show lack of democratic processes. They are an attack on the working class as a whole, on organised struggle, on the decisions we make through our collective processes.
This is why they unleash defamatory and totally unfounded accusations against Cliff Smith personally for using union funds to attend international union and workers’ meetings such as the recent WFTU congress in Italy
We are well aware, as are all members of Roofers Local 36, that Cliff Smith attended that Congress paying for his tickets and expenses out of his own pocket. As did many other unions and trade unionists from around the world who are not careerists trade unionists with salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or bought and paid for mechanisms in the service of the employers.
As long as the workers and their Unions organize, demand and fight militantly for the just demands of the working class, our employers together with their minions in the trade union movement will try in every way to stop us.
The crude and shameless attack on Cliff Smith’s person is intended to strike at the functioning and action of the union itself. They fear organised, collective struggle. That is why they are trying in every way to hide any struggle process that exists. It is no coincidence that no mention was made this year by the bourgeois media of Greece on the great mobilisations of the workers in LARCO, COSCO, Kavala oil, E-food, as well as the big Congress meeting of PAME that took place in Athens on 18-19 June and was attended by more than 2,000 workers representing more than 500 Trade Unions, Federations and Workers’ Regional Trade Union Centres.
When workers receive such attacks, it means that we are on the right track because our action annoys our enemies, because we stir the waters, because every day we can and do win one more worker on the road of unyielding class struggle.
Workers’ solidarity is our greatest weapon in our struggle against capital and its political representatives all over the planet, against trade unions controlled by the governments and the employers.
