The outcome of the 39th Congress of the Confederation of Public Sector Workers (ADEDY) strengthens the prospect of the labour movement becoming a counter-pole to all anti-people governments and the capital they serve.
Democratic Militant Cooperation (DAS), whose ballot is formed by trade unionists rallied in PAME, recorded a major rise in votes, percentages, and seats, from 134 votes, 21.3% and 18 seats in 2022 to 168 votes, 22 seats and 25.57%, and emerged as the leading force, toppling the government-aligned faction DAKE from first place.
The Congress was attended by delegates from 36 federations, elected by 250,000 teachers, professors, healthcare workers, doctors, sanitation and municipal service workers, employees in regions, universities, decentralized administrations and ministries, increasing the rate of union density. Delegates from 1,040 primary unions took part.
Through their stance and choice, they delivered a resounding slap to the government, which piles one anti-people measure upon another, and sent a clear message of opposition to the policy that involves our country in wars, impoverishes public sector workers and the people as a whole, intensifies repression, and promotes even more reactionary changes in the anti-people bourgeois state.
DAKE is toppled from the first position it held over the past decade, while PASKE’s percentages decline for yet another congress.
Delegates turned their backs on the ballots of the former SYRIZA – New Left bloc, whose cadres have already rushed to secure a place on Tsipras’ bandwagon. Workers sent the message that “journeys to the most beautiful seas” cannot be made with boats built from the rotten materials of social democracy.
The Congress result is a living expression of the rise of class struggles so that we may live as we deserve, based on the immense wealth we produce and the possibilities offered by modern scientific achievements. It is recognition by workers of the daily effort of DASY trade unionists to revitalize federations and unions, to free them from state designs, and to thrust them decisively into struggle.
It fills us with even greater responsibility to strengthen a militant, anti-capitalist – anti-monopoly current of counter-offensive within the organized movement of public sector workers. We will continue tirelessly, more decisively, together with all workers, to stand in the front line to organize our struggle in every area of the public sector, in coordination with private-sector workers, the fighting farmers, the poor self-employed of the cities, together with our children in schools and universities. Guided by our modern needs, we will continue to fight for the regrouping of the workers’ and people’s movement. The dilemma was and remains: “Their profits or our lives.”
Everyone to the unions! Everyone to the struggle!
