The Federation of Workers in Pharmaceuticals in Greece Denounces the Blood-stained Profit Game of the Multinational Pharmaceuticals that IndustriALL Defends

Today, a year since the beginning of the pandemic, the working class in all over the world is mourning more victims every day, the signs of the irreconcilable opposition of workers-capitalists have become even more obvious, industrialists and multinationals demand more sacrifices from the workers.

The Pharmaceutical multinationals are sacrificing human lives on the altar of their competition for profits, patents, and contracts, while provoking by saying that they want time and cannot deliver the vaccines that have already been prepaid.

This macabre sciencetrade, which is paid with human lives, is being supported by the International Trade Union Organization IndustriALL, which is controlled by the mechanism of imperialism and multinationals, the ITUC.

Specifically, with its announcement on February 1:

• IndustriALL assures bosses that “workers are ready and eager to produce all the medication” at a time when pharma multinationals are increasing exploitation of the workers with intensification of work, unpaid overtime, despicablecontracts.
• At a time when multinationals are firing and attacking workers’ rights under the disguise of the pandemic, IndustriALL is worried about bosses’ profits!

Profits, that, as announced by “Pfizer”, are expected to be about 15 billion dollars in sales this year only from the vaccine developed with the German “BioNTech”. The value of global pharmaproduction in 2001 was estimated at 390 billion dollars and in 2019 reached 1.5 trillion dollars while at the same time the average wage of workers fell, and thousands of layoffs were made for their “restructures”.

While in all over the world, not only patientsdie but also doctors, health workers, workers in the pharmaceutical industry are dying of exhaustion from the underfunding of the public health system, IndustriALL blesses the “public-private cooperation ” to deal with the pandemic and that this is the best “example of internationalism“! So, they say that the robbery of the people’s money, of the research of the Public-State Universities and Research Centers for the profits of the monopolies is “internationalism”!

• IndustriALL launches a dirty washing of the multinationals saying that “their attitude during the pandemic period will judge the pharma industry”.So, while the Pharma multinationals continue the macabre bargain for the contracts of the patents and vaccines on the victims of the pandemic, but also while for decades they continue to profit worldwide with the patents and the expensive costing of drugs which have led to thousands ofdeaths in Africa, in Asia, but even in America and Europe, IndustriALL acts as an advertiser for those who sacrifice human lives for their profits.

Characteristic is the pursuit of profit, which the popular strata pay even with their lives, as revealed by scandals such as

• that of “Purdue Pharma”, which last November admitted its guilt in the so-called “opioid crisis” in the US, paying a fine of 8 billion dollars.
• “Sanofi” also hid safety data for the anticoagulant “PLAVIX” and has received lawsuits for misleading advertising from the State of Hawaii. The company’s response was that there is freedom of opinion and it had no obligation to report any side effects.
• Another illustrative case is the ‘Pfizer’, which in 2009 “closed” a corresponding case of illegal promotion of drugs (painkillers and drugs for mental diseases) for uses for which they had not received license (one of these, “Bextra”, later withdrew)by paying the amount of 2.3 billion dollars, ie the equivalent of its approximately three weeks of sales, while it continues this tactic in the coming years as the cost of fines is a minor part of its profits.

It is typical that the workers of the multinationals that produce vaccines (see Astra- Zeneca, Sanofi-Pfizer) at the same time are attacked by the employers and are in mobilizations.

IndustriALL with their press release proves the dangerous role they play in disorientating the working-class movement. They want the workers to accept the logic that say that peoples will get sicker and the monopolies will gain billions from their sickness. While workers in Pharmaceuticals and healthcare workers are giving a struggle for life, IndustriALL defends the profits and the image of the monopolies.

The Federations of Workers in Pharmaceuticals in Greece denounces the macabre profit game of the Pharma monopolies that IndustriALL defends.

The workers in Pharma and Healthcare, being doctors, nurses, pharmaceuticals workers, we are giving an everyday fight for the protection of the People’s Health, and not for the profits of bosses and monopolies. Westrengthen the struggle for health and safety measures in workplaces, for hires to cover the enduring needs of the pharmaceutical production but also at the Health System, for Collective agreements with raises in wages and improvement of the working conditions.

Atthesametime,we denounce and fight for the removal of the “patents”, as a status that is immediate connected with the profits of the monopolies, by sacrificing human lives.We fight for a single state body for the production – distribution of medicines and vaccines, within an exclusively public and free healthcare system for all and the abolition of all business activity. We are fighting for a society where medicine will be a social good, in a society where people will own the wealth they produce.

We Strengthen the Struggle for Life, Health and Workers’ Rights

We do not become defenders of the bloodstained profits of multinationals.

Federation of the Workers in Pharmaceuticals in Greece