May Day Strike 2026

No sacrifice for their profits and wars, organization and struggle to overthrow the system of exploitation

On May 1st, 2026, we take up the red thread that connects the struggles of our class for “a world worthy of our dreams and of humanity.” We march on the road of overthrow, paved by the heroes and pioneers of the class struggle, from the workers of Chicago in 1886 to the 200 communists executed in Kaisariani on May Day 1944.

Now is the time for the working class to come forcefully to the forefront, to clash with the policy of profit, which commits crimes every day in the workplaces, crushes wages, labor and people’s rights, and drags the people into the slaughterhouses of imperialist war.

We are putting all our efforts into the success of the May Day strike, so that the streets across the country are flooded with striking workers, so that the hopeful message of organization, militant uplift and struggle reaches every worker and every workplace, the message expressed at the largest nationwide workers’ meeting ever held in Greece, on April 4th, in Kaisariani.

The participation of 720 unions, federations, regional unions and more than 2,000 trade unionists showed that the conditions exist for workers and their unions to leave their own mark and determine developments in their own interests. For the working class to take the lead in organizing a great and militant nationwide movement to overthrow the anti-worker, anti-people policy.

140 years after the uprising of the workers that marked the struggle for the 8-hour day, the struggle under today’s conditions for the reduction of working time, for a 7-hour day, 5-day week, 35-hour week, is not a utopia. It is a modern, realistic and absolutely necessary demand, inspired by the great militant traditions of the working class and by the possibilities of our time.

In a period when labor productivity, science, technology, and the development of Artificial Intelligence have reached levels unprecedented and unimaginable in previous eras, it is unacceptable for workers to live with exhaustion, insecurity, and endless hours of work.

The enormous possibilities produced by human labor, scientific knowledge, and technological progress must mean less work, higher wages, more free time, and a better and higher-quality life, not greater intensification of exploitation and wars for the increase of the profits of business groups.

We continue, with the May Day strike, the struggle against the EU, NATO, the business groups, the ND government and the parties of Euro-Atlanticism, which are openly attacking our rights, imposing 13-hour workdays, the arrangement of working time, flexible schedules and intensification within the framework of the war economy.

While they hand out “crumbs” for the minimum wage, mock the people with various “passes,” and high prices crush the income of working-class families, at the same time state coffers are filled through direct and indirect taxes from the increase in fuel prices and their derivatives as a consequence of the war. This money is used to finance the country’s further involvement in the war, tax exemptions and privileges for business groups. They give 7 billion euros a year to NATO, which has nothing to do with the defense of the country, while the EU allocates 800 billion euros for its war preparation.

We will not pay for the wreckage of their war! There is no room for patience, no waiting, no compromise and no tolerance for this situation. We strengthen the struggle everywhere: for wage increases, for Collective Labor Agreements, for stable daily working time, for the abolition of taxes on widely consumed basic goods, on energy and fuel.

The involvement of our country in the imperialist war of the USA and Israel in the Middle East must stop now. All military missions outside the borders must return. The US and NATO bases must close now. We will not wait for the turn of our own people to come, nor will we become perpetrators against other peoples by participating in the slaughter of the peoples of Palestine, Iran and Lebanon.

We honor International Workers’ Day and the dead of our class!

With organization and struggle against the criminal policy of profit! No trust in the European Union, in the ND government and in the parties that support the policy of exploitation and war.

No old or new governmental “savior” will save the people and the workers. The stability of the system of exploitation means instability, insecurity, poverty and new burdens for the people.

It means the stench and rot that emanate from the OPEKEPE scandal, which bears the stamp of the ND government and the EU. It is neither an exception nor a “deviation.” It is the result of the Common Agricultural Policy, which wipes out poor farmers, concentrates land and production in ever fewer hands, and breeds clientelism, corruption and the buying of consciences. This is their “normality”, the people bleed while the few grow rich.

Equally rotten is the scandal exposed once again involving the European programs “utilized” by the leadership of General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE), in coordination with the government and employers, so that employer-led and government-controlled trade unionism is reproduced inside trade union bodies in exchange for support for anti-worker policy.

The great strike struggles of the previous period show the only way out, the road of organized struggle, the solidarity of peoples and the clash with the policy that sacrifices the needs of the many for the profits of the business groups.

The strike on February 6th, with dockworkers coordinating in 20 ports across 7 countries, firmly declaring: “Dockworkers do not work for war.” The strike response of the seafarers, who fought for the safe repatriation of their colleagues from war zones. The strike in the Food and Beverage sector, so that we do not live through more “Violantas,” so that we do not count more dead and maimed workers in the workplaces.

This is the road we choose, and this is the road we will continue on with even greater determination. With even greater mass participation in the unions. With organization in every workplace. With the creation of new unions wherever employers want workers unorganized, frightened and silent. With stronger unions, we wage the battle to change the balance of forces in the labor and trade union movement in favor of the workers, against employer-led and government-controlled trade unionism.

For unions of workers, not of employers! For the working class to rid itself of the labor bureaucrats who turned the trade union movement into a stepping stone for careers and privileges, such as the millionaire president of GSEE and the PASOK – ND – SYRIZA/New Left trade union mechanism that supports him. Their signature is on the disgraceful “social agreement” between the government, SEV and the GSEE leadership, which is nothing but another tombstone over collective bargaining, sectoral Collective Labor Agreements and workers’ rights.

Workers have nothing good to expect from this lifetime leadership of GSEE. But they are reckoning without the real labor trade union movement, which is regrouping, changing the balance of forces and acquiring a common step with the movement of the farmers, the self-employed and the youth. A movement that is giving important and hopeful battles against the government and the bosses.

As the recent GSEE Congress also showed, two worlds have historically been expressed within the labor trade union movement.

On the one hand, the compromised majorities in GSEE and General Confederation of Pubic Sector Workers (ADEDY), and overall the forces of employer-led and government-controlled trade unionism, which have divorced themselves from the problems and anxieties of workers. Those who backed the undermining of historic gains such as the 8-hour day and the National Collective Labor Agreement. Those who cultivate defeatism and fatalism in order to strengthen the line of social partnership, the view that workers have the same interests as their exploiters, the parasitic owners of the business groups. The view that workers must sacrifice themselves for their profits and wars in the name of “national goals,” which serve only the interests of the capitalists.

On the other hand stands the class-oriented movement, PAME, expressed through the action of thousands of pioneering trade unionists in the workplaces and hundreds of unions that do not compromise with the logic of the lesser evil, with fatalism and delegation. They take the lead in the difficult course of organizing the working class in its unions, in organizing the struggle for its interests, away from the poison of social partnership and class collaboration. They take the lead in the effort to change the balance of forces and strengthen the current that challenges the dominant policy against the system of war and capitalist exploitation.

This hopeful step of strengthening the anti-monopoly, anti-capitalist line of struggle within the organized labor trade union movement is also expressed in the change in the balance of forces in hundreds of unions, major Federations and Regional Unions, and at the Congresses of ADEDY and GSEE.

The real balance of forces is recorded in the streets of struggle, where workers will once again isolate the labor bureaucrats by flooding the strike rallies of the unions. All unions that are concerned and anxious, that do not compromise with the rot of employer-led and government-controlled trade unionism, have a place in these rallies. Because that is where everyone is judged: in the workplaces and sectors, on the road of struggle. That is where ideas are tested. That is where hope is born. That is where real overthrow grows stronger.

We draw inspiration from the great class struggles of the past and make a pledge to the struggles of the future: to do everything in our power so that the working class stands at the height of its historical mission. To strengthen the struggle, to clash with the power of capital, to break once and for all the chains of the exploitation of man by man, and to open the road for a society without poverty, wars, injustice and oppression.

LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ DAY!
LONG LIVE THE WORLD WORKING CLASS!

All workers to the strike rallies of the unions

In Athens, at 10:30 a.m., at Syntagma

In Thessaloniki, at 10:30 a.m., at Venizelos Statue