PAME that represents the class oriented trade union movement of Greece condemns the Turkish Government, which satisfies the demands of the industrialists by prohibiting the strike of the metalworkers who fight for the signing of a Collective Contract with better wages.

While thousands of metalworkers had gone on strike in 19 factories from January 29 and were preparing the escalation of the strike in other 18 factories in the coming days, the Turkish Government provocatively serving the interests of industrialists proceeded to ban the strike utilizing a law that followed the 1980 junta, through which the government can suspend for two months a strike when there are reasons of “national security”!

Under the same logic, the Greek governments often tried to block strikes. Common component has always been to serve the interests of the capitalists, which are baptized “national interests”. In this direction, and the metalworkers in Greece, the steel workers, the maritime workers, the teachers, even the employees in supermarkets are dragged every day in courts because they fight for their rights.

For the workers “national interest” is the ability to feed their families, to live decently, to go for work in the morning and to return alive at night in their homes. Life has shown that others are the national interests of the industrialists and their governments and other the interests of the workers and the peoples of each country.

The class workers movement of Greece denounces the authoritarianism of the Turkish Government and will express its solidarity with the metalworkers Turkey in many ways. The answer to the industrialists-government attack will be the international workers’ solidarity, the strengthening of the struggle in Turkey and in every country for workers’ rights.

We demand:

The Turkish Government to take back its decision to ban the strike

To satisfy the demands of the metalworkers for signing collective agreements with better wages

Athens,3/2/15