The tremendous success of PAME Nationwide Meeting is a call for militant revival and struggle
Now all forces into the organization of the May Day strike!
The largest labor meeting ever organized in Greece concluded with great success on Saturday, April 4, in Kaisariani, writing a remarkable and hopeful page for the country’s labor and trade union movement. The overwhelming participation, the energy, and the enthusiasm permeated PAME’s Nationwide Meeting, confirming that workers can leave their own mark on developments.
More than 2,000 trade unionists and 720 trade union organizations from every corner of Greece answered the call: “No sacrifice for their war and their profits – Organization and struggle on the road of overthrow.” They gathered in a place soaked with the blood of the 200 communists executed by the Nazis on May Day 1944, pioneering workers and trade unionists, sending a message of struggle and uncompromising fight.
At the Near East stadium, the heart of the liveliest and most militant section of the country’s labor and trade union movement was beating: the unions and trade unionists who fight major class battles against the employers and the bourgeois state, so that the working class may breathe, step to the forefront, and confront the policy of profit, which commits crimes every day in workplaces, crushes wages, pensions, labor and popular rights, and today drags the people into the disaster of imperialist war.
Through a vibrant process, which was the culmination of the broad discussion and preparation that had opened in the previous period within the sectors and workplaces, valuable experience was exchanged: from the struggle to organize workers’ collective fight through unions, Labor Centers and Federations, to the important steps being recorded that demonstrate in practice the possibilities for the labor movement to regroup its forces, improve the correlation of forces, and move onto the counteroffensive.
The road of common struggle is the one that gives strength and perspective. In exactly this direction, the presence of representatives of poor farmers and stockbreeders, the self-employed, the radical women’s movement, OGE, the anti-imperialist peace movement, EEDYE, the student movement, MAS, as well as our fellow trade unionist serving his military service, was of particular importance. He conveyed the militant voice of the young conscripts, who are organizing their own struggle through their committees so that Greece withdraw from the war. Also important was the presence of retired military personnel, who united their voices with the struggle of the unions against war preparations and involvement. All this highlighted the strength of the social alliance, of coordinated struggle against the common enemy: the monopolies and the policy that crushes the people in the service of their interests.
The large delegations of unions from Palestine, Venezuela, Cyprus and Germany, as well as dockworkers from Italy, Turkey and the Basque Country, fill us with courage and hope, as they highlighted the importance of common coordination and uncompromising class struggle. Internationalist and class solidarity is the workers’ weapon against the monopolies, their governments, the EU and NATO. The peoples of the whole world have the power to confront and overthrow the barbarity of the capitalist system.
From Kaisariani comes a clear call for militant revival. The militancy and determination expressed at the Nationwide Meeting will become a force of struggle in every sector and every workplace. With stronger organization in the unions, with new steps in rallying forces, with common action against the employers, the state, and the policy that sacrifices workers’ lives for profits and for their war, workers can impose their own just cause. We leave the Panagopoulos clique, the submissive majority of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) leadership, to their scandals and their mire, together with the government, the industrialists (SEV), and their people in the trade union movement.
Now is the time for the Regional Unions, the Federations, and the unions to step forward, organize the strike response, and throw all their strength into organizing the May Day strike, so that it becomes a milestone of escalation and counterattack. With planning, organization, and clear orientation, the way out lies on the road of overthrowing the system of exploitation and wars.
Photos and video from the Nationwide Meeting on April 4 and the major Internationalist Event on April 3
Photos
Internationalist Event on April 3
Nationwide Meeting on April 4
Video
Highlights from the Nationwide Meeting