ALL ON STRIKE ON MAY 1st!
130 years since the Athens May Day and the demand for the 8-hour day as a mature need since then, we are faced with the EU directives and the corresponding anti-worker legislation that all governments and the current one impose, in order to abolish the 8-hour day, to make working time flexible, to establish 13-hour, 6-day and 7-day work. Laws and directives that have found and still find the support employers’-controlled trade unionists, who serve capital and the policies of the bourgeois parties.
80 years after the execution of 200 communists in Kesariani, this May Day finds the working class facing the full-frontal attack of the EU, the bourgeois states, and the business groups against all those who fight for workers’ rights, against the dirty equation of fascism and communism.
From Chicago in 1886 to the Athens May Day of 1894, from May 1936 in Thessaloniki to the May Day of 1944 with the heroic sacrifice of 200 communists in Kesariani, the working class has written with the indelible ink of its blood the most glorious pages of class, organised struggle and demand, which no state and no employer’s intimidations and repression can stop.
May Day marks the struggle of the workers against their capitalist exploiters, for the demand of better working and living conditions, but also to open the way for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, for the overthrow of capitalist barbarism.
May Day is not a holiday, it is a strike! And so it will be militantly honored by all the trade unions in our country.
Against the efforts of the leaderships of the GSEE and ADEDY-members of ETUC in Greece-, the forces supporting PASOK, ND, SYRIZA/New Left who fought the strike mobilizations on February 28 and April 17, tried to weaken and undermine them, we gave the message that the working class puts its life first vs the profits of the capitalists!
The so called “progress” of the business groups and their political staff, the EU, NATO and the other alliances of the bourgeoisie are: Increased exploitation and war!
75 years since the establishment of the imperialist killing machine of NATO and 25 years since the destruction of Yugoslavia by NATO and the EU, the working and popular strata are experiencing the consequences of the intensification of the imperialist wars and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. They are experiencing the consequences of Greece’s deeper involvement in this imperialist conflict, its ever-stronger ties with NATO and the EU, for the benefit of the shipowners, industrialists, businessmen and their interests in the region.
At the same time in our country, workers are experiencing poverty and exploitation, forced to live on wages reduced by 25% compared to 2010, with inflation having made basic survival goods unaffordable. Business groups are making record profits, relying on the destroyed rights of workers, on the lack of health and safety measures in the workplace that have led to hundreds of deaths of our colleagues. This is, after all, the basic condition for the business groups to disburse the huge sums of the Recovery Fund, when our people are forced to dig deep into their pockets in order to have even a doctor for a surgery.
This policy, which is being imposed in all EU countries, is the reason why workers are taking to the streets en masse and fighting for their modern needs. These are promising struggles, they show the enormous power of the organised working class, they show the way of perspective against capitalist exploitation.
We continue even more resolutely for:
The demand for better working and living conditions, for collective bargaining with wage increases and extension of rights.
The immediate abolition of the anti-labour laws that smash the 8-hour working day and criminalise trade union activity, prohibiting the right to strike. We fight for 7-hour – 5-hour – 35-hour work as the development of science and technology allow.
Immediate measures against inflation.
Direct measures for the health and safety of workers at work.
Disengagement from imperialist plans and war conflicts.
Solidarity with the people of Palestine in their just and hard struggle against the murdering state of Israel, which is slaughtering them with the backing of NATO and the EU.
For the working class all over the world, May Day is the beacon of the uninterrupted class struggle. The attempt of the New Democracy government to abolish the May Day strike, based on a law of SYRIZA, and turn it into a public holiday will not pass.
Our struggles must continue and grow stronger.
ALL in the May Day strike and in the strike meetings of the trade unions
Athens May Day Rally 10.30 in front of the Parliament
May Day Spot