PAME NATIONAL MEETING
REGIONAL UNIONS– FEDERATIONS – TRADE UNIONS – TRADE UNIONISTS
SATURDAY, APRIL 4 – 9:00 AM – ATHENS (NEAR EAST SPORTS HALL)
NO SACRIFICE FOR THEIR WAR AND THEIR PROFITS – ORGANIZATION AND STRUGGLE FOR OVERTHROW
In a world burning from imperialist wars and interventions, in a world where human life is devalued and entire peoples are massacred, in a war that takes on such global dimensions, for the first time in 81 years, and in which the Greek government has involved our country, only the organized people can provide a way out on the road to overthrowing this barbarity.
We live in conditions that humanity has not experienced for entire generations. The imperialist intervention in Iran and the escalation of war in the Middle East by the terrorist states of the USA and Israel have intensified all the contradictions of the system. These contradictions are linked to the ruthless competition between the USA and China for supremacy in the imperialist system. All the regional conflicts in the Pacific, the war between the USA/NATO–EU and Russia that has been raging for four years in Ukraine, the interventions in countries such as Venezuela and the threats against others such as Cuba, are episodes of this generalized war that is escalating as capitalist plunderers fight for profits, energy resources and rare earths, and for the routes of energy and commodity transport.
With the responsibility of the government, our country is involved in a barbaric war spreading across the Middle East and the Mediterranean that may escalate further. Greece has been turned into a war launching pad, with bases everywhere, ports and airports placed at the disposal of imperialist powers, while new troop deployments outside the country are also considered. This policy turns our people into a target. Their war is not our war.
The deployment of troops to Cyprus does not serve the security of our people or of the Cypriot people but the protection of British bases and American forces stationed there. This dirty war is not fought for the peoples. It is fought for the profits of the imperialists.
US–NATO bases must leave our country.
Greece must get out of this dirty war
No trust in the government and in the parties that agree with the NATO and EU butchers. Their tears are fake. All of them together, during the period of imperialist “peace,” rob us for their profits—and during imperialist war they will rob and kill us again for those same profits.
They sacrifice our rights for war preparation and the war economy.
Global military spending has reached the astronomical amount of 2.72 trillion dollars.
In the EU, the ReArm Europe program of 800 billion euros is already underway.
In Greece, military spending will exceed 30 billion euros in the coming years.
They cut from health care, welfare, education and social policy in order to subsidize the profits of business groups and the war economy. The shameful “Social Agreement” signed by big employers, the government and the trade-union bureaucrats of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) aims to freeze wages and halt the demands of trade unions.
Workers are told to “keep their heads down” and support the “national goals” of capital and bourgeois governments. Employer and state intimidation is intensifying, and new measures restricting trade-union activity are being prepared. Labour rights are being dismantled, 12-hour and 13-hour workdays are imposed, and workplaces have become modern crematoriums, like the case of VIOLANTA biscuits factory. They want us to get used to the idea that our people will return in coffins for their wars and their profits.
TRADE UNIONS OF WORKERS – NOT OF GOVERNMENTS AND EMPLOYERS
In these conditions, the need has become even clearer to strengthen workers’ organization in workplaces, to increase trade-union membership and defeat employer-controlled and government-controlled unionism everywhere. Without the decisive steps taken in recent years to change the balance of forces in the trade-union movement, these struggles could not have been organized. This is the great contribution of PAME.
These massive mobilizations faced all the governments and parties of capital, employers’ associations and also the majorities in GSEE and General Confederation of Public Sector Workers (ADEDY). Once again we witnessed their treacherous role as they supported the government and business groups with all their forces. The most striking example was the shameful “Social Agreement” secretly signed by the GSEE leadership.
The corruption revealed through European programs and the machinery of buying consciences set up by the government, employers and trade-union bureaucrats confirms how these forces remain in their positions. PAME has denounced this mechanism and the electoral frauds supporting it for years.
THE HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS STRUGGLES LIGHTS THE PATH FORWARD
This year marks 140 years since the Chicago workers’ uprising for the 8-hour workday. Their struggle became a symbol of the invincible power of the working class determined to move forward for social liberation.
We take up the torch of struggle from the heroic uprising of the workers of Thessaloniki in May 1936 and from the 200 executed fighters of Kaisariani on May Day 1944. Most of them were pioneering trade unionists of the interwar period, persecuted and tortured because they refused to submit to exploitation and to the barbarity of a state that sacrificed workers’ rights to war preparation.
Their heroism inspires and educates us in militancy, dedication and selflessness in the struggle to abolish the exploitation of man by man.
WE CAN MAKE A BIG STEP FORWARD
By building on our positive experience we can:
• Coordinate more forces in a broad nationwide front of struggle.
• Multiply the centers of struggle and resistance in every workplace, sector and neighborhood.
• Strengthen trade unions and raise the level of workers’ organization.
• Change the balance of forces in unions, federations and labour centers in favor of class-oriented forces.
• Strengthen joint action with farmers, students, the self-employed and other popular forces.
We extend solidarity to the victims of imperialist war, migrants and refugees. We strengthen internationalist solidarity with Cuba, Palestine and all peoples struggling for peace and friendship.
WE HAVE THE POWER TO SUCCEED
The great strike of dockworkers in 20 Mediterranean ports on February 6 and the seafarers’ strike on March 5, declaring that “we do not work for war,” show the path forward. They demonstrate the power of workers to win.
They show the road of overthrow, with Greece outside the EU and NATO and the people masters in their own country.
We call on all trade-union that fought together in recent years to take part in the discussion and coordination of the next steps of our struggle.
WE STRENGTHEN THE STRUGGLE:
• Greece out of the war! No participation in Euro-NATO imperialist plans. Close all bases in our country. Recall the Greek Patriot battery from Saudi Arabia and bring back all naval frigates and F-16s. No Greek occupation troops in Palestine.
• Stand with the Palestinian people. Immediate recognition of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
• No attack on labour and trade-union rights in the name of the war economy.
• 7-hour workday – 5-day week – 35 hours, secured through collective agreements.
• Wage increases, pension increases and restoration of the 13th and 14th salary and pensions.
• Restoration of workers’ gains such as seniority increments, favorable collective agreements, Sunday rest and overtime pay.
• Health and safety measures in workplaces, our lives are not a cost.
• Funding for health and education, not for the slaughterhouses of war.
• Protection of working women and maternity rights. Universal application of the 10% marriage allowance.
• Unemployment benefit for all unemployed at 80% of wages.
• Measures against inflation and for the protection of workers’ income: tax-free threshold of €12,000 plus €3,000 per child, price caps on energy and basic goods, abolition of VAT on essential goods, tax-free diesel for farmers.
• Reestablishment of the Workers’ Housing Organization (OEK) for modern and affordable housing.
• Protection of trade-union freedoms and resistance to anti-union repression.
WE BECOME THE PROTAGONISTS OF HISTORY
OUR POWER IS ORGANIZATION
OUR WEAPON IS SOLIDARITY
OUR HOPE IS STRUGGLE
