PAME expresses its solidarity with the Bolivian Workers’ Confederation and with the workers of the country, who are engaged in multi-day strike mobilizations against Decree 5503 and the anti-people policies that are leading to a dramatic deterioration of their living standards. At the forefront of these struggles are workers in the mining sector, together with dozens of workers’ organizations from the public and private sectors, farmers, and youth, who denounce this policy as deeply class-biased and unjust.

This specific decree of the Bolivian government is part of its adjustment to the directives of the International Monetary Fund and was issued following meetings with monopoly groups and the U.S. State Department. It provides for the abolition of taxation on big capital, the protection of foreign investments, and guarantees their profitability for at least 15 years, particularly in the strategic sectors of mining and energy.

Bolivia’s strategic resources are handed over to monopoly groups, while the burden is shifted onto the shoulders of the working class and the popular strata, leading to outrageous increases: 86% in the price of gasoline and 160% in the price of diesel fuel. These increases directly hit incomes, transportation, and the very survival of millions of workers.

The attack on workers’ and popular incomes is not a peculiarity of Bolivia. It is the same policy experienced by workers in Greece as well, within the framework of the European Union’s strategy. A strategy that paves the way for guaranteed profits for capitalists while it reaches deep into the people’s pockets. Tax exemptions and subsidies for big capital, the commodification of energy, the energy stock exchange, exorbitant electricity and fuel prices for the people, while free fuel and privileges are granted to shipowners and business groups.

In Greece, as in Bolivia, energy poverty is deepening, while farmers and workers are mobilizing in order to be able to produce and live from their labor, in opposition to a policy that serves profits, the so-called “green transition,” war preparation, and the imperialist plans of the USA, NATO, and the European Union, within the context of the sharpening of their antagonisms with China and Russia.

PAME stands by the side of the workers of Bolivia. The struggle for cheap energy as a social good, based on the needs of the people and not on the profits of monopolies, is a common struggle of the working class all over the world.