Colleagues, we are proud to be dockers and we claim and fight for our rights with our consistent and unyielding struggles with our union, ENEDEP-COSCO Dockers Union in the forefront.
We put our right into practice, with courage and dignity, through mass General Assemblies, with hard struggles at the docks and gates of the port and we achieved the FULL INTEGRATION in the Heavy and Hazardous work category of social insurance-BAE for the dockworkers at COSCO piers II and III, not only from 2018 that we had ALREADY won, but also STARTING FROM 2012 as we insisted and fought!
It is a day of deep emotion and honour; it is not an exaggeration to say that this is a historic success that raises our height as well as of the movement. We have overturned the blatant injustice imposed on us for 15 years. We rejoice and with a smile on our lips we open the way even further for the implementation of all the rights resulting from our universal inclusion in the BAE since 2012.”
We are demanding immediate registration of all days since 2012 and equal pay for equal work. A single contract for the whole port. Life itself has confirmed that everything is won by struggle. Since 2014 WE FOUGHT TOGETHER, with our Union in the lead, ENEDEP against governments and ministries, against the employer COSCO, DPort, contractors, against the stumbling blocks that were put in our way by the fifth column that they recruited in the march to act among us..
Against the logic of compromise and submission, we did our duty, WE FOUGHT for the self-evident right that was consciously and deliberately denied to us by all of them.
WE FOUGHT for the existing legislation for ALL dockworkers in ALL ports in the country to be included in the BAE.
WE FOUGHT to overturn the regime in favour of COSCO, which all of them consistently served. WE FOUGHT so that the COSCO piers in Piraeus would not be a special economic zone.
The well-founded answer that ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIES our rights and our struggles, was given to ALL of them by the decision of the Council of State to which they had appealed in order to cancel the application of the BAE in COSCO’s piers II and III. Even the courts that banned our strikes could not save them, for this just demand.
Colleagues, from Monday, the leadership of our union ENEDEP met with the Ministry of Labor and we demanded and received commitments that everything will be moved with the fastest possible procedures, and that the forms will be pasted one by one from 2012 so that as soon as possible the BAEs will be reflected in the cards of all beneficiaries and now the huge problem for the correct insurance and retirement based on what the law requires will be solved!
We have no confidence in those who created this problem and for this reason we call on all colleagues to participate in the strike on 23 October throughout the port of Piraeus with the prospect of escalation. Colleagues, the vindication of our struggles may have been delayed, but it came solemnly! It shows the one and only way, the one and only way: THE WAY OF STRUGGLE!
Now, with even greater strength, with even greater determination, with even greater solidarity, we will fight together, led by the only defender of our rights, the only representative of our interests, the only guarantor of our conquests, our Union ENEDEP, to open new roads and new horizons!
OCTOBER 23 Piraeus Port on STRIKE