With great participation and militancy, the class unions of Greece honored the International Workers Day, May 1st 2018, with Rallies in 75 cities, all over Greece under the slogan “Fight Against Exploitation and Imperialist War, For the Final Victory of the Peoples”.
The main rally of PAME took place in Athens with guest a delegation of the WFTU, the Ambassador of Palestine in Greece and trade union SLOGA from Serbia. Also in the rally was read a message of solidarity from workers of Turkey and the Common Declaration by 26 Unions from 16 countries of Europe and the Mediterranean against the Imperialist Intervention in Syria. The rally of Athens, with huge participation of workers and youth demonstrated in front of the embassies of France, UK and USA and the offices of the EU. Great rallies were held by PAME in dozens cities all over Greece.
Photos from Athens:
Video from Athens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey10Mq4jVsc
Photos from Thessaloniki and Piraeus:
Photos from other cities:
Earlier, in the morning a delegation of WFTU, PAME and SLOGA, paid tribute on the monument of WFTU and on the monument of 200 Greek resistance fighters who were executed on May Day 1944 by the German Nazis
Photos from tribute activity:
The Executive Secretariat of PAME stated:
“May 1st calls us to stay defiant! It is a duty and a need to strengthen the struggle for the abolition of antiworkers’ laws, for the recovery of the losses suffered by the working people, for the restoration of Collective Agreements, for increases in salaries and pensions, to struggle against the imperialist war.
In our country the SYRIZA – ANEL government celebrates May Day, by legalizing from today the auctions and seizures of peoples’ homes for debts to banks and the State. At the same time, it holds in one hand the bloody symbols of the USA, NATO and the EU, involving our people in dangerous imperialist interventions and in the other the whip, to strike and suppress the workers’ and youth movement that protest against the murderers of the people.
The imperialists redraw borders and prey by murdering the peoples in order to enlarge their enormous profits, to control the oil and transport routes. Here and now the naval base of Souda in Crete and all the foreign military bases in Greece must close. To close the British bases in Cyprus that are bases of death. All Greek soldiers who are in missions abroad must return. We must fight for the disengagement of our country from NATO and the EU, which are key factors of destabilizing the region and redrawing the borders!
The workers we have nothing to gain by “waiting for better days”, as the narratives of the “after memoranda” and “fair development” that the government says. The current negative situation does not change by making new sacrifices and believing in new fairy tales. The solutions come from organized action outside and beyond the capitalist one-way path of the EU and its governments.
The way out lies in the organization and struggle against the capital and its political personnel, the governments and the parties that defend the system of exploitation. In the fight against the trade unions controlled by the employers and the governments, who are the mechanism of the bosses inside our ranks. In the struggle with the prospect of making the workers the owners of the wealth they produce.
Long Live May 1st and class struggle!
Long live the International working class!”
