On behalf of the class oriented movement in Greece, PAME, we would like to thank you for the invitation to participate in this meeting. We consider it to be an important initiative, since it opens the debate about the escalated attack against the workers of our countries by the capitalists and their political personnel.

I would like to start by saying a few words about PAME.

PAME was founded in 1999 and is a coiling of Trade Unions, Federations, Regional Labour Centers from all over Greece, from both the Private and the Public Sector. The basic principle that these trade unions are colliding is the agreement in the class struggle. Is the defense for the rights of the workers against the business groups, the political parties and the Governments that serve them, against the imperialistic organizations, the European Union and NATO, against the unionism led by governments and employers.

With this line PAME gathered together thousands of young workers, pointed out new trade union leaders, coiled new forces, new trade unions.

This line combined with the open call to every honest unionist and worker, every trade union, to the workers at the factories, at every place of work, had specific results that you can count.

At the initiative of PAME for the Collective Contracts in 2015, we brought together in total 518 trade unions in Greece. Federations, Regional Labour Centers, business and branch trade unions. From these trade unions the 353 are with the lines of PAME. 165 are not.

But in 2016 finally took part at the conference of PAME 538 trade unions. An increase of about 30%. All thought we are not satisfied of what is done so far, with the workers response that is not appropriate to the employers attack, we made significant steps to the front. Steps that wouldn’t be possible, if there wasn’t this line of struggle.

Dear colleagues, this is not a random time that this conversation is about Social dumping, which is a policy of the EU, which is applied as a part of a whole anti-workers strategy that has as a target the ruining of workers’ rights to make ensure more profits for the big business groups.

Let’s see more specifically the notorious “European acquis”: The whole debate about ‘social dumping’ is facing the violation of labor law and the violation of labor rights – those leftover from the anti-labor storm – as a ‘distortion’ of capitalist competition against supposedly “good” business companies. That is why it uses the term ‘dumping’ which is well established to impose aggressive economic policies on monopoly groups against competitors.

The EU, the big capital and its political parties also face labor rights not from the point of view of the needs of the working class, but from the point of view of business interests and monopoly competition.. That way they promote the fake separation between “good” companies that supposedly respect labor rights and “bad” traders, calling on laborers to bet behind “good” capitalists against “bad guys”, in order not to reduce the competitiveness of the first.

Often, however, business groups in each country that do not keep their profit-making interests within the EU framework call for barriers, tariffs and restrictions to be introduced between them, to the EU-favored imports of unskilled workers without caring for workers and their rights. Their anti-EU rhetoric does not conflict with the very nature of the EU as a union of capital. Just these portions of capital opt for other non-EU alliances because it better serves their profitability.

That’s why often even the calling of violation of workers’ rights, like false self-employment, iconic companies, unregistered work, non-payment of insurance contributions etc ends up serving competition interests of businesses while all these people don’t make a sound about the “legal” forms of the most wild exploitation of workers.

Those that the EU and their bourgeois governments have them as a “given”: part-time job, contracts for a specific time of work, the slavery of the “employment offices”, the various contracts off “stand-by” – work for an hour, contracts of a certain duration, the flexible working relationships depending on the needs of the businesses, and other more that with an impressive “inventiveness” discover and establish with laws all together, monopoles, EU and governments. The target for the capital is to lower the price of the working force to the level of their “trading competitors”, India, China etc, like they say to the notorious “Agreement for Euro” and the EU laws for the “European Economical Governance”. These directions have also and the so called European Social Pillar that is promoted at this time by the EU.

Not only the EU but each and every capitalistic state is separately promoting for the interest of its own monopolies the same anti-workers measures, having along bonds and measures of economical protection against their opponents. Both of the parties have as a given that they want paychecks as low as they can get and workers with no rights. So at the target of the workers need to be in total the competitiveness of the capital, the profitability of the businesses groups, the economy that as criteria has the profit of the monopoles.

And all of this at the same time that the declarations of the supporters of the EU for the assurance for prosperous days, seem like a bitter joke. And its logic since the EU is a union of the capitalistic states of Europe, that the creation was supported on anticommunism, the hostility against the labor movement. It’s a challenge for the EU to be presented as the “supporter of democracy”, “the human rights”, when EU sawed and is steel showing her most brutal face with the imperialistic interventions in Yugoslavia, in Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria. Or even with the support of Nazi forces, like in Ukraine. But also with the creation of concentration camps – a modern Dachau – for the refugees and immigrants. It systematically attacks to the rights of the workers to have unions, to meet and to fight, systematically it prepares the ban of the unions rights and liberties, to the right to Strike. Meanwhile at the same time it promotes a new series of restrictions and bans to any type of forces, political, unionist, doubt the right of the businesses groups to exploit the workers.

Peoples have gathered an important experience, especially the last few years, and we have a duty to help for conclusions to come out that will strengthen the fight of the workers in each country against the EU, against the governments of the capital, against the big business groups and their power.

Besides the European capitalistic unification, in all its historical course, from the EEC to the EU and to the one-zone, had and still has as a basic target the safeguard of the competitiveness and the enlargement of the monopolies of the state-members in conditions of competition and reordering the international imperialistic system. This basic motivation of the EU constitution as a transnational imperialist alliance set and continue to set as the main cohesive elements smashing wages and workers’ rights and promote the “liberation” of the markets. For this reason the basic common element that walks through the Maastricht treaty, the strategy of Lisbon and next the strategy “Europe 2020 for the employment and the development” is the common front of the monopolies of the EU against the working class and the people.

It’s also not true that this strategy of the EU was determined because of the international capitalistic crisis, or by the debt of certain state-members of the EU like some forces claim in Greece. Both the crisis and the debt is a creation of this rotten system, since it is being fed by the own nature of capitalism, its contradictions and its weakness to achieve progress and prosperity for the people. From the support and the founding of the monopoles that keeps adding new weights to the workers. This is why they have in their strategy the adjustment of the laws, the salaries, the working relationships in the new conditions of the international market of working force, that its value has been reduced with the massive entrance in it of cheaper working force (from China, India, Russia, other countries of Eastern and Central Europe, Asia, Latin America).

We think that we shouldn’t isolate the social dumping from the causes that gives birth to it.

Today, more than ever, capitalism strengthens the exploitation and takes off all the workers’ rights that had been earned the last decades. Its target is the higher profit and to this direction organizes new imperialistic wars, launches its fire against the people for the control of the energy sources. For one more time, the capitalists and their governments reorganize the borders and redraw the maps. For one more time, they spill the workers blood for the interest of the multinational companies.

So it’s clear that the attack against the workers of our countries is being escalated and is for the same cause: the increase of the exploitation of the workers so that the big business groups can get out with profit from the crisis. The passing to the phase of capitalistic recovery-development demands for starters cheaper and more flexible working force. This is the essence of all the anti-workers and anti-people measures that were promoted everywhere by the bourgeois trough its governments. There is a deal of all the parties that serve the capital for the continuance of such an anti-peoples policy. Governments, socialists or liberal, from the far right, or so called “left” of any kind, they escalate the attack to the workers with the goal to strengthen the competition and the profitability of the businesses.

Nowadays, a tricky example is Greece, where the government of SYRIZA, a party that used the mask of the Left, proletarian slogans and preemptively deceived the people, has deluded the idea that its government would change politics, restore wages and pensions and the rights that have been abolished. However, SYRIZA’s only promises were to the multinationals, to the big capital. The people imposed new memoranda, with new cuts in wages and pensions, new barbaric taxation. At the same time gives defiantly privileges and tax breaks to manufacturers, bankers, ship-owners, hoteliers. It promotes growth at the expense of the lives of working families. It is a government that does not hesitate to achieve its goals of imposing repression measures against labor struggles, even leading to persecution against the leadership of PAME, to those workers who resist the EU strategy. This of course is not only met in Greece. In many countries so called “progressive” governments serve capitalism, using their special talent of exploitation the workers fight and to put the labor movement on standby, to create illusions and waiting. In many countries of the world, these “progressive” governments force anti-workers measures and memorandums. Look what has happened the last 30 years to Italy, France, Spain and elsewhere. Social-democratic governments with the participation even the communist parties took off people’s rights, did not hesitated to bomb other people like in Yugoslavia.

The attack on the workers is relentless whether there are memorandums in the countries of Europe, or not. There is after all a permanent memorandum that demands common measures for the reduction of the price of the working force, taking off all the conquests we had the last century.

Faced with all these, the situation in the international trade union movement it is not unrelated. We think that today the international trade union movement is “disarmed”. The bourgeoisie with its supports in social democracy and trade unions has managed to divide the workers, weaken trade unions around the world. They managed to impose reformist leaderships, to impose a line of compromise with our class enemies and their governments.

The level of rottenness in some trade unions in Europe and the USA is such that the workers don’t see any difference between those and the companies of legal advising. The workers of Europe and USA don’t see the trade unions as a fighting, revolutionary union of workers that will fight with all their means for the solidarity and the collectivity between the workers. The workers don’t see these unions as a school of the revolutionary fight. Likewise, they see them as bureaucratically organizations of collaboration with the bosses. As mediators between the governments and the workers. As companies, or branches of the Ministry of Labor. This is the part that ETUC plays in Europe, like a true expressionist of the “working aristocracy”, a loyal servant of the EU, a propagandist of the “social cooperation” and the “social dialogue” as a mean of manipulation of the workers and their submission to the needs of the capital.

They argue that the EU could become more friendly for peoples if its conditions were to be applied seamlessly! They are trying to trap workers in the so-called “European social model” and in “implementing labor standards that must guarantee a minimum threshold of fundamental social rights for all …”. That is, a net on the lower level, with labor standards … misery and poverty.

They continue to focus their criticism on what the EU’s dominant management mix will be. They tell the workers that from a capitalist development everyone has to win, if there are rules. However, business groups set the rules. They are in fact legislating in the EU and in all Member States. Mostly, they even promote the draft lows they want on letterhead that have their own brand.

They have dear colleagues in one word the line of defense of the capitalistic way of development, from which the people of the countries in Europe can only expect the worst. And within this line are many of the leaderships of national trade unions move, like GSEE in my country.

In the exact opposite direction is WFTU that’s why we participate as PAME, with their trade unions and their unionists. WFTU struggles to reinforce the fighting parts within the trade unions. It looks for the unity so that the fight of the proletariats to strengthen against the monopoles, against the multinational companies and their political representatives. So that it will be gathered both such as a quantity as a quality forces that they can conflict with imperialism, to connect the struggle and the fights of the workers for the immediate problems, with the radicalization of the fight and abolishing human exploitation.

However, we are well aware that each trade union is obliged to fight for the rights of workers within its own country. First of all in his own country. To the extent that it strengthens its struggles at national level, insofar as it strengthens the class conception in the particular country, it objectively helps to strengthen the international labor movement. Because when we say an international trade union movement, we are actually talking about the overall situation, the overall picture of the movement, as it composes the country puzzle with the country. The individual remodels the whole.

With this line we held the front for almost 40 General Strikes the last few years. With rallies, take over, conflicts in Greece. With thousands of strikes and movements in branches. Special times within our actions was in 2014 the accomplishment of a Rally in Athens with the participation of 1,000 organizations and over 100,000 people, the heroic strike of 400 steel workers for over nine months, the long-term fights of the workers from the coca-cola, the struggle of the workers in Athens Ledra Hotel that closed a year ago and many other fights in many different branches.Recently the Antiimperialist Demonstration of PAME in Thessaloniki, June 24.

The unions that are with the forces of PAME have also a rich experience of internationalism and solidarity. We took a series of initiations for the rebuilding of the unionist movement in Europe.

We hosted the 16th Congress of WFTU. We actively participated at the 17th Congress in South Africa. The previous years we organized international meetings for the workers in the multinational of Commerce, Telecommunication as well as a meeting with the branch of the Public Sector of WFTU for the workers in the public sector and we participated in several international branch meetings.

And it’s our decision to support with new initiations the action to create a class orientated pole in Europe, for the strengthen of WFTU with new members. We believe that with these fights, all our actions have created a better structure and better conditions to contribute steadier to the effort of regrouping the Labor Movement in an international level.

We certainly do not want to say that we have done everything well.

Since our founding conference in 1999 there was the troubling about what kind of trade unions we want. With what kind of line of struggle. And of course with what kind of final cause.

Having as a base the great history and the rich experience of the class orientated trade unionist movement in our country but internationally also, we try each and every day to give our fights with the criteria the defense of the interests of the working class against the monopolies, against the multi nationals, the fight for the modern needs of the workers families, to open a new fighting course, with the ultimate goal of wealth belonging to those who produce it.

With this as a strategic target we have tried to create the conditions in the movement that will make our cause easier.

That’s why we fight for our trade unions to have class orientation, to coiled working men and women to fight against the brutality of capitalism and imperialism.

With massive, strong organizations in each branch, especially on the developing branches that employ a big mass of workers.

We build trade unions that run democratically and are controlled by the workers from massive procedures. With leaderships that will come from the working class. Leaderships that will respect the criticism and self-criticism. Leaderships that will devote to the fight against the bureaucracy and the corruption.

Trade unions that will fight decisively against the discriminations of the workers as it comes to gender, race, religion. Against racism and with a permanent front against Nazism, and the far-right organizations that thickens again in Europe.

Trade unions that will promote the unity between workers, farmers, youth and women from the popular strata. In Greece we steadily promote this kind of alliance and we have made significant steps towards it.

Trade unions that will fulfill their international duties of the proletariat solidarity towards the people that struggle around the world. PAME as an WFTU member has stand in the first line in this duty, supporting the workers of Palestine, Syria, Cuba and to all the people that are being attacked by the imperialistic centers.

We want trade unions that will educate the new generations of workers with the history and the lessons of the international and national trade union movement and the fights of the working class.

That will intervene to the national organizations that will demand solutions for the workers, that will demand democratic and trade union liberties.

We do not want Trade Unions neutral, nor generally with all of us, because it is impossible to be with all… For example, in the Middle East, we are not in favor of Israel but with Palestine. We fully support the struggle of the Palestinians not only verbally but also with concrete action, every day.

Here now, as trade unions, we must ask ourselves, would it be this attack so brutal, would they be so many the losses of the rights of the workers all over Europe, if it wasn’t dominant the line of ETUC? A line of submission to the only way of the EU, to the politics of competition of the big business groups that lowers even more the price of the working force. Would it be such a hard situation for the workers of Europe if the attack of the governments and the monopolies would find against them a working class organized, fighting, in massive unions and not in bureaucratic ones, unions with class orientation and not unions that are servants for the bosses?

We say it clearly. We fight to get off the EU. The debt should be paid by those that have created it. With the only difference that all of these should be done by a working class that will be the master of the wealth that creates.

We, dear colleagues, think that the history of the workers’ movement clearly shows that whenever the movement was identified with the line of exploiters of the working class, many woes followed for the people. In the most critical of such moments, workers were led into devastating wars, with incalculable consequences for their lives and their future.

We are open to collaborate with these criteria:

The fighting line, The proletariat internationalism and the combined fight for today’s problems but also for the abolition of the capitalistic exploitation.