50,000 Greek civil servants and public sector workers on Wednesday staged a successful 24-hour national strike and a big march through Athens against the government’s barbaric plans to sack hundreds of thousands and cut wages and pensions by 20 per cent.
Pensioners who participated in the march said that it was the biggest public sector demonstration since the 1960s.
Large contingents of civil servants from every single ministry and state organisation participated with their colourful banners along with teachers, local government, post office, health, public transport workers, archaeologists, actors and thousands of university and secondary school students.
The most popular chant of the Athens march was ‘Down with the junta of PASOK’, PASOK being the government party. This was an enthusiastic and joyful march of public sector workers liberating themselves from the ideological shackles of ‘duty’ to the capitalist state.
In contrast, Elias Vrettakos the deputy leader of ADEDY (public sector workers’ federation) refused to call for the overthrow of the government but he did call for ‘occupations and mobilisations’.
ADEDY and GSEE (the Greek TUC) have declared a 24-hour general strike for October 19, hoping to once again defuse the situation.
The Greek Communist Party organised its own 10,000-strong separate march.
When the head of the march reached the Vouli (Greek parliament) workers tried to push down the huge iron fence put up by police to stop demonstrators marching to the Vouli’s entrance. They were pushed back by the riot police’s tear gas.
Then, as the march was leaving the square, the riot police squads attacked the university and school students’ contingents with tear gas.
The students kept their discipline but the riot police went berserk attacking women, children and journalists. There were at least 16 arrests and two persons rushed to hospital. Athens Metro workers stated that the riot police threw tear gas canisters inside the Syntagma Metro underground station where youth had found refuge.
Both the Greek Photoreporters Union and the Greek Journalists’ Union have filed law suits against the police action.
Police said that they themselves would investigate the complaints of police violence.
