“The amendment that abolishes the right to strike will not pass. Even if it is approved the workers will overrule it in practice”. That was the clear message sent by the workers that heeded the call of the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME) – of the class oriented trade-union organizations, and participated in the demonstrations organized on the 5th of December 2017 in Athens and many other cities of the country.
In the evening of the 4th of December the SYRIZA-ANEL government tried to approve the abolition of the right to strike slyly like a thief. Its initial plan could not be achieved, resulting in revoking the amendment before midnight of the same day, after the reactions by the KKE and by the trade-union movement: they immediately condemned the miserable tactics of the government and organized a demonstration for yesterday, during the voting of the amendment. In any case, the government that does the dirty job of the capital, has not changed its antilabor plans and is planning to bring again the amendment through a different bill.
With this bill the government requires that in order to decide to go on strike the resolution should be taken with a minimum of support of 50% +1 of the workers in the assembly and in the voting. A prerequisite that, as Dimitris Koutsoumbas, SG of the CC of KKE, denounced from the parliament podium in conditions that the arbitrariness of the bosses, the terror, the blackmails of layoffs, lead to the workers to behave in a clandestine manner in order to inform one another, to collectively discuss, to organize an assembly or a demonstration, as if we are in conditions of deep illegality.
The SG of the CC of KKE noted among other things that: “You are a ruthless government that has no remorse, in order to serve the interests of the capital. Your officials have reached the point of saying that it is a measure to reinforce democracy in the unions! You have broken every record! The Union of Greek Industrialists surely will be crying like a baby from the thrill you are giving them. Even in their wildest dream they could not imagine that they would find such a capable servant! That is why you are so recognized, as I mentioned earlier, from your “partners” in the EU”.
D.Koutsoumbas warned the anti-people government that “you are deeply mistaken if you thing that this aberration will be applied in practice. The workers will cancel it with their organization and struggle, as they will cancel every effort to impede their struggle, the social progress and will blast to kingdom come, when the time comes, every political representative of this rotten exploitative system”.