The leadership of the Hotel Workers Union of Rhodes expelled 3 unionists from the Union because they criticized the leadership as a supporter of the interests the big hotel owners and not of the workers.

Rhodes is one of the most famous tourist islands of Greece, with huge hotels, with thousands of workers in each one. The majority of the workers work for very little money, under very hard conditions. Many hotels are owned by big tourism multinationals and make huge profits. In these very hard conditions the class oriented unionists in the island have been trying to organize the workers in each hotel to fight for collective contract and in 3 of the biggest hotels, they created 3 Unions and made important struggles for Collective Contracts and trade union rights.

However, the leadership of the Hotel Workers Union of Rhodes (member of GSEE, affiliate of ETUC) has made no action in this direction. In contrast it has supported all the anti-workers’ measures of the Government and has opposed to any initiative of organizing the struggle of the workers. It has abolished any collective procedure, general assemblies etc. and has accepted wage cuts in workers’ salaries more than 30% and also accepted many workers’ layoffs.

This leadership, in order to continue to control the Union, before the last elections it expelled 4.000 (!!!!) workers-members of the union, targeting especially the unionists with class orientation, who wanted the union to change direction and rally with PAME. In addition they sued for slander workers who criticized these tactics.

This is the “democracy” of class collaborationists. They support the interests of the employers, and they turn the unions into mechanisms who will attack the workers’ rights. Whoever will oppose they will try to make them disappear, to expel them from the Union’s ranks.

As the Government of SYRIZA promotes new reactionary trade union legislation, new ways to block the action of the class unions, of PAME, it uses Union leaderships such as the Hotel Workers Union of Rhodes to forward its antiworkers’ policy.

Against their intimidations and dirty tactics, the workers of Rhodes take the situation into their own hands. They isolate such leaderships and confront the line of class collaboration. They rally with the class forces.