PAME’s Strike Call

20 NOVEMBER 2024 – GENERAL STRIKE

ALL IN THE UNIONS – ALL IN THE STRUGGLE

EVERYONE TO THE RALLIES OF THE REGIONAL TRADE UNION CENTRES, THE FEDERATIONS, THE UNIONS

IN ATHENS, AT 10.30AM, AT THE PROPYLAEA

MONEY FOR WAGES – EDUCATION – HEALTH

GREECE OUT OF THE SLAUGHTERHOUSES OF WAR

PAME calls on all unions, all Federations and Regional Trade Union Centres to give all their strength for the success of the 24-hour national strike on 20 November in the public and private sector.

Now is the time for coordination of all workers and their unions, for joint action against the anti-people’s policy of the government and the business groups that oppress our lives.

There is no choice but to fight for the success of the strike everywhere, nothing will be gained if we do not fight, if we do not fight for our own interests. The great strike battles fought by the construction workers, the railway workers, the deliverymen, the hotel workers, the miners in the shipbuilding zone, the dockers, the shipyard workers, the health workers, the teachers show the way, give hope and optimism for more sectors to join.

Because there is the living side of the unions and struggles, the unifying, militant side that fights to overturn the ugly situation and devaluation of collective action. For which the well-known leaderships in the GSEE and ADEDY(ETUC Members in Greece), which support the government’s policy, are responsible and are part of the problem.

The government imposes the doctrine: the workers lose so that the business groups can win.

Capital’s attack on our rights continues. We are constantly the losers, while at the same time the owners of the business groups are constantly the winners, the ones who get rich from our work, from inflation, from the genocide of peoples such as the Palestinian people by the murderous state of Israel!

The Ministry of Labour’s bill on the minimum wage and collective agreements not only seeks to nullify the role of trade unions, but to legislate a permanent cut to workers’ wages. An automatic wage cap. The new way of calculating the minimum wage will be based on the guidelines of the European Union, the laws of the memoranda that all the ND, PASOK and SYRIZA governments have voted for and implemented. Laws that abolished collective bargaining and collective bargaining for the benefit of business groups. Laws that dismantle the fixed daily working time, the 8-hour 5-day, they want to impose the 6-day, the arrangement of working time with 10-hour to 13-hour working hours, unpaid work up to 1.5 hours a day. These are laws that have legitimised the employers’ impunity in imposing exhausting working hours, unpaid overtime, in setting sectoral wages.

Let us recall that by an Act of the Council of Ministers in 2012 (the co-government of ND – PASOK and the far-right Karatzaferis) overnight the minimum wages were cut by 22% and 32% for young people under 25 years of age, abolishing the signed National General Collective Labour Agreement. The average wage was lowered by 40%, obeying the calls of the IMF, the EU, the business groups, the shipowners, the bankers.

The EU – government – employers have put the agreements on ice. Real wages are 14% lower than in 2011. Employers refuse to sign collective agreements; they want to abolish the sectoral minimum wage and equate it with the minimum wage of the National Collective Contract. They want to abolish specializations and fully enshrine flexibility and the overrunning of working time. It is no coincidence that in 2024 only 8 national sectoral or inter-professional agreements have been signed, of which only 2 have become compulsory!

The criterion of competitiveness and profitability means for workers low wages and salaries that end before the 15-day period is over. At the same time, the companies listed on the Athens stock exchange have accumulated more than 22 billion euros in net profits in the last two years.

We live and work in a vast valley of Tempi.Profits dipped in the blood of the workers!

At the same time they are further commodifying the functioning of critical sectors such as health, education, energy, water, transport, social security, infrastructure and civil protection services for natural disasters. We are confronted every day with the non-existent measures to protect our health and safety at work. Every day there is a dead or seriously injured colleague!

We turn our backs on the bosses’ minions inside the unions, we walk on the road of subversion.

The leaderships of the GSEE and ADEDY have a huge responsibility. Their attitude over the years has been the main ally of the governments to pass and implement the whole anti-labour apparatus that has pushed wages to the poverty line, cultivating the logic of one way and sacrifice for the profit of the business groups. They no longer even call in words for the abolition of anti-worker laws and regulations. Their logic is, what has been done does not change.

The only certainty for them is their stated support for the direction to achieve the strict fiscal targets and profitability of the business groups. The cultivation of the fatalism that nothing comes out of the struggles and that the solution lies in the search for “government saviours” and in the washing out of anti-people’s policies. In this pursuit, the compromised leaderships of the GSEE and ADEDY want to play a leading role.

Greece out of the war slaughterhouses – free Palestine

We do not accept our basic and daily needs to be sacrificed to give billions to NATO armaments, for missiles, frigates, war planes. The deeper involvement of our country in imperialist plans and wars, the US-NATO bases in Greece and the sending of Greek forces to imperialist plans create incalculable dangers for our country and our people.

We do not accept the fact that for so many months now, 500,000 euros a day have been given for the frigate in the Red Sea, money that is equivalent to the annual budget of a hospital, enough to build dozens of new schools, to hire teachers and instructors. We do not accept paying through the state budget 7 billion a year for NATO purposes and Greece’s involvement in wars, at the same time as there are no measures to protect our lives from natural disasters. That is why we are fighting for the disengagement of our country from the imperialist wars, which we are all paying for with bloody economic consequences and with risks that give rise to the possibility of a new generalised capitalist economic crisis.

No one alone!We strengthen our solidarity with every trade union, every workplace and every sector fighting for the just demands of the workers.

We send the new anti-labour monstrosity of the Ministry of Labour on the minimum wage and sectoral agreements to the waste basket.

We give all our strength to escalate the struggle and demands for:

• Repeal of all anti-worker laws that undermine collective agreements and fixed daily working hours.
• 7 hours – 5 days – 35 hours, stable work with rights. No to 6-day work, to flexible forms of employment, to unpaid work and unpaid overtime, to the regulation of working time.
• Wage increases and collective agreements. Clause to adjust wages according to inflation. Restoration of the collective bargaining of the EAGGF, minimum wage of 950 euros.
• 20% increase for civil servants. Restoration of the ^13th and ^14th salaries in the public sector, granting of all salary scales, abolition of the unacceptable separation in salary progression according to education category.
• Restoration of conquests such as three-year contracts including the period 2012 – 2023, the principle of the most favourable contract, post-employment and accumulation, Sunday holidays, overtime pay.
• Substantial protection of working women and maternity through collective agreements. Make the 10% marriageallowancecompulsory and universal.
• Substantial increases in pensions. Restoration of the 13th and 14th pensions. Incorporation of the personal differential. No pension below 80 % of salary.
• Unemployment benefit for all unemployed and without conditions at 80% of salary.
• Measures against precision and for the protection of the workers’ – people’s income. Tax-free allowance of 12,000 euros for each worker and 3,000 euros for each child. Price reduction and price tariffs on energy and consumer goods, abolition of VAT and indirect taxes on all these already for working and popular households.
• Exclusively public and free, upgraded education for all. Abolition of business and all class barriers and filters put into education.
• A single exclusively public and free Health – Welfare system, for all, to meet all the needs of the people in modern prevention – treatment – rehabilitation services. Health is a guaranteed social good and not a commodity.
• Legal safeguarding of the protection of the first people’s housing, no to evictions and auctions. Substantial rent subsidies. Comprehensive housing planning aimed at meeting the needs of the working class, the people, reestablishment of the OEK and strengthening of the exclusively state-owned construction program. Unsubsidizedloans for beneficiaries.
• Measures for health and safety in the workplace.
• Protection of trade union freedoms and rights.
• Disengagement of our country from the imperialist plans and wars organised by the USA – NATO – EU. Stop now the genocide of the Palestinian and Lebanese people. Solidaritywith the refugees.

Our strength is the organization.Our weapon is solidarity.Hope in the struggle.EVERYONE TO THE GENERAL STRIKE ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20.