SOME 1,500 workers marched through the Athens city centre on Thursday evening, in a militant demonstration of solidarity with the nine-month-old fight of the Finance Ministry’s sacked women cleaners.
Large delegations of secondary school teachers, school guards, ERT media workers and other public sector workers participated with their banners in the march, along with some industrial delegations and left wing parties.
At the front of the march were the sacked women cleaners with their banner stating ‘Clean away government and austerity measures’, followed by the teachers’ union OLME banner ‘Overthrow government-EU-IMF policies, stop dismissals’.
The marchers, chanting rhymed slogans against the government, police and EU, headed to the Finance Ministry building in central Athens whose entrances have been blockaded by the cleaners’ camp, now joined by tents of sacked teachers, school guards and municipal police.
Last Wednesday the President of the Greek Police Union visited the cleaners to offer solidarity and took the opportunity to reprimand the riot police squad close by on their attack last Tuesday.
Following the march, a Solidarity to the Cleaners concert was organised outside the Vouli (Greek parliament). Just a couple of hours before the march, the Greek government announced the sudden resignation of the Finance Ministry’s General Secretary for Public Revenues Kharis Theokharis.
His appointment two years ago was a product of the insistence of the EU-IMF-ECB troika to impose a department at the heart of the Finance Ministry independent of the government and which would follow the creditors’ orders to the hilt.
In essence Theokharis was accused by the government of following his own agenda which clashed with stated government policies. In an unprecedented move, the European Commission itself issued a statement, minutes after Theokharis’ resignation, expressing serious concern, noting that Theokharis had played a ‘key role’ in improving Greece’s finances and insisting ‘that the Greek government ensures full continuity in the delivery of planned reforms’.
The worsening economic crisis and the resistance of the Greek working class to the barbaric Austerity Measures imposed by the EC and IMF, are responsible for the divisions within the Greek government and the disagreements with Greece’s creditors.
The women cleaners’ determined fight is only the tip of the iceberg of the huge revolutionary movement of workers and youth that is now building up and nearing explosion point.
