PAME denounces to the working class the owners of ZOURAS Food Industries and the Government of SYRIZA for the terrorization tactics and arrests of strikers-workers and trade unionists on Saturday at Thessaloniki.
On 4:30 of Saturday morning, November 21 with an organized, military style, action of riot police forces and the presence of the Justice Department, the police arrested 28(!!!) strikers who were on picket lines to guard the ongoing strike. In addition they arrested workers from another factory of the same business group, who were there to support the strikers. Among the arrested are cadres of PAME, 4 of whom are trade unionists from the leadership of the local Food and Drinks Trade Union. The day before, the same employer, in another factory of this business group, used armed bodyguards against the picket lines, and the police arrested the President of the Trade Union for slander!!!!
The workers of ZOURAS demand to be paid their accrued wages and for this, months now, they are treated like criminals by the SYRIZA Government. They are not paid for their work, they suffer lay offs and intimidations by the employer and the Government arrests them, while the employer is free.
This is the system of exploitation we have to break! Half lives, unpaid work, without rights and when the workers rise up against injustice they face state oppression and class controlled justice.
PAME calls all trade union organizations to condemn these ongoing intimidation tactics. The attempts to break workers struggle through state oppression and employers’ intimidations.
All workers to join their unions! Only our organization and struggle can respond to the escalating authoritarianism, to the new and old anti workers’ measures. To strengthen the lines of the class trade union movement!
- Drop all charges against the workers and trade unionists
- Solidarity with the fighting workers of ZOURAS
- Payment of the accrued wages and cancelation of all lay offs
