Workers, unemployed, young men and women

Stronger, more decisive, even more massive to continue the fight. To raise higher the banner of struggle, of resistance, of workers’ demands.

All of us who decided, participated and organized the great National Rally of November 1^st, the over 1000 trade unions and popular associations, we take great responsibility. We take the responsibility to strengthen our action, to organize the struggle in every industry and workplace for the success of the strike of November 27.

We have the duty to respond directly and militantly to the conditions of slavery, to break the inaction of the employers’ and governmental trade unionism, which undermines and the strike. We respond to the inaction, with mass participation in every city, in every industry and workplace.

A new, Europe-wide anti-worker attack is coming!

They want us in permanent misery. In chains!

The General National Strike on November 27, IS CONTINUATION AND ESCALATION of the struggle against the war that our government, the European Union and the monopolies have declared. They prepare new attacks against labor, insurance and trade union rights of the workers and the people in general. They escalate the attack on the working class, the self-employed, the farmers, the young people and the unemployed, the pensioners and the women.

The industrialists, the shipowners, require new changes on labor and social security rights. They have prepared new form for the trade union laws. Their goal is to silence the voices in the workplaces. They want to block any workers’ demand, any trade union activity and the right to strike.

This is how they plan to exit from the crisis. This is the recovery they expect and prepare. This is the plan for all European countries.

The trap is set!

We must not be unprepared.

If we do not respond in force, even worse will come! The looting of peoples’ income, the abolishing of labor relations is not enough for them! They test our strength and they provoke us.

They prepare new cuts in pensions, and they openly debate about connecting healthcare to the number of insurance days for each employee. That means that the vast majority of the working people and the unemployed will be entitled to one gauze and one painkiller.

No worker to become strikebreaker

Thicken the lines of struggle. Join our trade unions, and militantly express our indignation and our rage. No tolerance, do not “sell” our hope. Do not surrender our weapons; do not lower the bar for our lives. Do not accept survival with crumbs for the workers, so as to feed the bellies of bosses.

There is no way out of the crisis that serves both the people and the monopolies!

The growth and the recovery that they seek is not for everyone. On the one hand they protect and ensure the profitability of large business groups and on the other they sow poverty, misery, salaries of 200-300€, precarious work and underpaid work programs, flexible working relations and the expensive healthcare, social security and education for the vast majority the working people.

Development for the people and not for the profits of the monopolies

Either with the Capital or with the workers!

There is no other choice!

Either we will bend the head and accept modern slavery, so as the monopolies can save and multiply their profits, or we will respond with new struggles to overthrow the brutal anti-people policies. Either we will fight at every level or we will pay a very high cost for this tolerance.

We must raise a wall against the arguments that support our eternal slavery!

Those who give priority on the profitability of the monopolies and speak about “healthy competition” and a supposedly “fair tax policy”, are condemning the people in living with crumbs.

Those who go into negotiations about the debt, they acknowledge it, and thus, they further tighten the noose on the neck of the working people.

We paid enough for the capitalist profitability, the crisis and the debt. We paid enough for our country to join the EU! The Debt was not created by the workers but by the anti-people policy that serves the profitability and the competitiveness of capital.

Those who do not open war against the EU and its policies, they support with all means economic competitiveness, the attacks on workers’ rights throughout Europe. The EU is a creation and a supporter of the capital and promotes these policies at the expense of the people.

If the views that sanctify and give alibi to this exploitative system are not defeated, workers will always be in chains and poverty will be spreading everywhere. For no reason and with no excuse should we accept the new brutal, anti workers measures.

Strengthen the struggles and the working class response!

Everyone in the battle for the success of the strike!

No tolerance, no consensus, no delay!

The working people must answer with fight at the anti-workers plans, to block the extortion and terrorism. To develop everywhere resistance, struggles and repel the barbaric anti-people policy. To strengthen the struggle within the workplaces, to strengthen the wave of disobedience to this policy. To refuse the policies that condemns us to poverty, unemployment and exploitation. Workers, self-employed, youth, poor farmers to strengthen their struggles and their alliance, claiming the life they are entitled.

National General Strike on November 27

We sign this document and denounce the dangerous escalation of authoritarianism, repression and criminalization of the struggles of workers, youth and popular strata.

The last outrageous examples, such as:

• 48 seamen of the transport ferry «SUPERFERRY II» (that is the entire crew!) were referred to trial, -because they dared to exercise their right to strike, as was decided by their trade unions in February 2013- on the charge that they violated the terrorist measure of “political mobilization” that had been imposed, for the umpteenth time, by the government.

The government and the law enforcement mechanisms attempt, with this unprecedented massive persecution of seamen, to impose a climate of terror within the ships, so as to bend the just struggles of the workers in the ships, in favour of the interests of the ship-owners.

• Next month, goes on trial in Thessaloniki, the President of the Federation of Pensioners, member of the Executive Secretariat of PAME, comrade Dimos Koubouris, on charges of “inciting” protests in Thessaloniki in 2010 against the local tolls, even though the accused unionist was not even present at the protest. The prosecution was made after a complaint against PAME by a known industrialist and president of the political party “DRASH”. The “identification” of comrade Dimos Koubouris as representative of PAME was arbitrary, under a completely untenable legal approach, which reveals the complete ignorance of the law enforcement authorities for the operation modes of PAME. It shows especially their overzealous to “fill” accusations against PAME, because PAME’s militant action is an obstacle for them! That is why in the indictment, organised mobilizations are characterized as “collective body of aggression” and the demand that highways must belong to the people as “invasion into foreign property”!

The above facts are added, to the multitude of prosecutions and convictions, to the state and employer violence against workers, peasants, students, immigrants. Such are the heavy sentence against the heroic strikers, workers of the Greek Steelworks, in contrast to the provocative acquittal – under the seal of the Supreme Court – of the landowners and their henchmen for the savage attack against immigrants in Manolada. Also the continuing persecutions of militant farmers, the recent arrests, detentions and violence against students and parents in Lamia, and Holargo, the new era of persecutions against students who participate in the struggles etc.

A few days before the anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising against the military junta, the government, in cooperation with the reactionary rectorate of specific universities decided the closure of universities. In a show of fist and unprovoked aggression they sent the riot police into schools, thus turning the forces of repression against the students and their collective action. The Government, the EU and specific rectorate authorities want to completely deliver the universities to business groups, so they did not hesitate to turn them into “education” camps, where they “teach” the doctrine of “law and order” in favour of the values of capitalism.

It turns out once again that the unpopular policy, in order to recover the profits of the monopoly groups, can not be achieved without the escalation of authoritarianism, repression and terrorism against those who “do not comply with instructions” of the government and the EU.

We urge the unions and the popular organizations, the workers in the field of justice, attorneys and lawyers, bar associations across the country, and any other organization of justice, to resolutely condemn such practices and persecutions against strikers, against tradeunionists, militant youths and other radeical activists. To denounce authoritarianism and the criminalization of workers and popular struggles. To request the immediate cessation of all these prosecutions.

We call the judges, who have also been recently in mobilizations for their demands, to not stand against the workers and the people who are fighting for their rights, to not contribute to convictions of workers and popular struggles through their decisions.

Signed by

33 Lawyers of Athens and Piraeus

55 Presidents and Secretaries of TU and Workers Federations