We Paid Too Much! We Will Not Pay Again!
PAME calls all workers, the youth to raise our fist, to not give in, to not accept to pay again their crisis. We will not decrease our demands. We will not give up our rights, our life. We will give a militant response with our collective procedures and our trade unions to the business groups, to the government that want to have us as slaves after the pandemic, working from dawn till night, when and where they want, for pennies.
The government, taking advantage of the restrictive measures and the insecurity of the workers for the outcome of the pandemic, attacks hard on workers’ rights, and gave green light to the employers to do whatever they want. At the same time, they did not stop giving the employers billions of euros, with measures in their favor in the name of dealing with the crisis, in order to keep, as they say, “the businesses standing up”.
The government and the employers use the pandemic to impose measures and reforms, seeking to sweep away any workers’ rights left. The urgent anti-workers bills that were legislated during the pandemic include measures that assist in the escalation of exploitation, giving to business groups an unprecedented immunity to impose all measures for the destruction of labor relations. From part time work, to unpaid overtime, from the transferring of workers to mandatory leaves and contract suspensions. At the same time, they are lifting all restrictions on prohibition of strikes, on the imposition of civil conscription against workers mobilizations seeking to “legitimize” the expanded repression in the workers’ consciousness, to ban political and trade union freedoms!
EU officials, the government, the Industrialists’ Union of Greece (SEV) and other employers’ unions, along with their helpful “journalists”, are talking about the “difficult next day” as of today, preparing the working people to accept the imposition of the alleged “extraordinary anti-workers measures”. All recent demands of the business groups confirm that employers and the government, with the support of SYRIZA and KINAL/PASOK parties, are taking advantage of the pandemic to ensure the profitability of the big business groups. It is not enough what they get, but they demand new fundings, new gifts.
They plan to burden the workers with this crisis by making even more decisive reforms to the further escalation of exploitation, as well as the multiform support of the capital.
They plan for the “next day” to leave nothing standing! They want us to accept to pay again, with new sacrifices, with unemployment, with low-paid short-term employment programs, with higher wage cuts, with the destruction of collective agreements, with the generalization of flexible employment, with attacking trade union organization and action.
We are not “all together” nor is there “national unity”. The interests and the needs of the workers are never the same with those of their exploiters. In the “good times” and the “bad times” always the workers are those who are paying with sacrifices the development and the crisis of capitalism. We have bitter recent experience that life itself confirms the worst-case scenarios!
We Remain United, Strong!
We Will Not Take A Step Back From Our Rights, Our Demands!
We must not allow, on the pretext of the pandemic, the violation of fundamental workers’ rights and the intensity of exploitation in the workplace! We must not fall victims again to the altar of the profitability of business groups, to their “development”.
On April 28, hundreds of Trade Unions of our country, we organize a NATIONAL ACTION DAY in all workplaces to highlight the great problems workers face today, on the occasion of the coronavirus pandemic.
We call the trade unions to take all necessary measures for the success of this mobilization. Taking the respective protection measures according to the instructions of health authorities, to proceed with protests and symbolic mobilizations in workplaces, at employers’ associations, in the gates of factories, etc., utilizing every form of struggle. The action days on 7 and 15 of April proved that we can organize our struggle even in these conditions. We do not back down!
The GSEE leadership (member of ETUC in Greece) supports the government in one bill after another. We did not expect the new crisis to understand the role of the GSEE who not only keep the workers chained but also co-shape with the government and the business groups every anti-workers step.
We are organizing our response to the measures taken by the government and the business groups that came to stay and what they are preparing.
With solidarity, organization, and collective demanding, we are fighting together from all sectors, to protect the health of the people, to defend all workers’ and people’s rights, inside and outside the workplaces, to stop the employer and government’s attack.
We respond now! We fight with all the means at our disposal so that we do not pay again.
The only way for the working people to get out of the pandemic and crisis is the path of organized counter-attack.
- Now we demand the abolition of the antiworkers’ measures taken with the bills to manage the crisis,
- We are preparing from now on and for the next day, by strengthening our organization in every workplace to claim life and work with rights, to claim all our needs.
OUR NEEDS, OUR RIGHTS AND OUR DEMANDS WILL NOT GO IN QUARANTINE
APRIL 28
NATIONAL ACTION DAY IN ALL WORKPLACES
We Paid Too Much! We Will Not Pay Again!
