IN mass general meetings last Tuesday the Athens transport trade unions in the Metro system, buses, trolley-buses, and trains decided on a total ‘rolling’ 24-hour strike starting today.
The strikes are against the government plans to put thousands of workers on a year long ‘labour reserve’ scheme or transfer them to other public sector services and then sack them.
The government have stated that workers on ‘labour reserve’ would receive 75 per cent of their wages while those workers who will be transferred would have their wages cut by up to 50 per cent.
Greek railway workers will also join today’s strike with a national stoppage. On the same day, thousands of university students and lecturers along with secondary teachers will be demonstrating for the repeal of the hated Education Law.
Last Wednesday, trades unions organised a march in Athens of public workers threatened with immediate sacking and in the evening a mass picket of the Finance Ministry against the ‘property tax’.
Last Tuesday about 1,000 local government workers demonstrated in Athens against ‘labour reserve’ schemes, mass sackings and the ‘property tax’ calling on workers not to pay the tax, which will arrive at households on the electricity bill.
The powerful trade union of the Public Electricity Board (DEH) has called on its members to refuse to cut the electricity supply to those families who do not pay the ‘property tax’. Both the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and the Coalition of the Radical Left party (SYRIZA) have also called on workers to refuse to pay the tax.
The vice-president of the local government trade union federation POE-OTA, Yiorghos Charisis, spoke to the News Line during last Tuesday’s march.
In last June’s general strike, Charisis was badly beaten in the head by the riot police and needed hospital treatment.
‘The union decided that we must build a mass resistance movement against the property tax and we call on all workers not to pay this tax.
‘We call on the government to tax the banks and the rich instead. We also call on all to come out in the streets and to fight for the overthrow of the government of Papandreou, IMF and EC.’
Last Tuesday’s local government workers’ march ended up at the General State Accountant Office where the assistant general secretary of the ADEDY (public sector workers’ federation) Elias Vretakos called for the implementation of the federation’s policy for occupation of ministries and state and public services and offices.
Greek government officials have revealed that, in their telephone discussions with the Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, the troika (IMF, EC, ECB) representatives demanded the immediate sacking of ten of thousands of workers in the public sector as well as more closures of public services and huge wage and pension cuts.
In its Report on the world economy published on Tuesday the IMF states that the recession of the Greek economy will reach 5 per cent this year and 2 per cent in 2012; Greek debt is estimated to reach 189 per cent of the GDP next year. Unemployment is to reach 18.5 per cent in 2012 according to the IMF Report, up 2 points from the present official 16.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, the Greek Finance Minister has said that ‘We are fortunate to be under the control of the IMF, the EC and the ECB.’
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos stated in the Vouli (Greek parliament) on Wednesday morning that ‘we are fortunate to be under the control of the troika (IMF-EC-ECB) so that we can exercise national restraint.’
If it wasn’t for the troika, Venizelos added, the Greek economy would have been ‘derailed’.
Venizelos said that the government would implement to the letter the ‘austerity measures’ demanded by the IMF-EC-ECB troika ‘plus additional measures’ which are now being discussed.
‘We will suffer more sacrifices,’ he said, emphasising that ‘We haven’t understood that the danger is that the system and the national economy will stop functioning.’
Statement by the Revolutionary Marxist League, Greek Section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
No to the taxes of the Papandreou-IMF-EC junta!
Form Neighbourhood Committees and Councils of Actions in every area!
For an Indefinite Political General Strike to overthrow the junta of Papandreou-IMF-EC and Capitalism!
THE successive barbaric class attacks of the parliamentary junta of Papandreou-IMF-EC through the ‘property tax’, the ‘professional tax’, the huge income tax on workers’ wages, the additional wage cuts of 10-20 per cent, and the imposition of 23 per cent VAT on everyday goods, are combined with:
• More tax reductions for big business and millions of euros handed out to the banks.
• Hundreds of thousands of workers transferred and sacked in the public sector.
• Annihilation of public services and a general sell-off of state properties and enterprises.
• Reactionary laws for the destruction of free state education, health and social services.
• The Prime Minister’s call for the revision of the Greek Constitution to facilitate the declaration of a dictatorial ‘state of siege’.
• The imposition by the EC of an inspectors’ Task Force with absolute powers on every Greek Ministry.
But even these ‘austerity measures’ are not considered enough by the international banks as the meeting in Poland of the Eurogroup and the USA financial ministers showed, which verified their differences and their complete failure to limit the world economic crisis.
Following the economic downgrade of the USA economy and the desperate interventions by the ECB (European Central Bank) through massive buying of European states’ bonds, bankers fear a so-called ‘domino effect’ which would be triggered off by a Greek default – however ‘controlled’ – and followed by Portugal, Ireland and others.
Some Eurozone countries and leaders demand that Greece and her debt should be kicked out of the Eurozone so that the euro can be protected.
Others see the world economic crisis as a way to impose a Central European Government, that is a dictatorship, under the economic and political rule of Germany and France.
The ‘patriotism’ of the Greek Prime Minister Papandreou and of the Finance Minister Venizelos has led to the transformation of Greece into an EC protectorate!
The Revolutionary Marxist League call on all workers and youth:
• Not to pay the taxes of the Papandreou-IMF-EC junta!
• Form in every neighbourhood Residents’ Committees and in every area Councils of Action with direct democracy procedures along with local community groups and trades unions, to defend families threatened with an electricity supply cut off and with repossession of their homes and/or properties!
• Full active support to the occupations and mobilisations of the public sector workers, civil servants and university students who are in the forefront of the struggle! Not a single sacking should take place!
• Throw out of the GSEE (Greek TUC) and ADEDY (public sector workers’ trade union federation) the treacherous leaders!
• Build a mass revolutionary Marxist party to organise workers, unemployed, youth and the self-employed in the fight for the overthrow of the government and of capitalism and for the establishment of a Workers’ and Small Farmers’ Government based on Councils of Action, with a programme of a planned economy: the writing off of the ‘debt’ and nationalisation of all banks and big businesses without compensation and under workers’ control and management.
For the proclamation of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital! Solidarity with the revolutionary fight of the masses in Egypt, with the resistance of the Gadaffi forces against NATO, with the British youth’s uprisings, with the general strikes in Europe!
Quit the European Union, the euro and NATO – for the United Socialist States of Europe!
(Athens 18 September 2011)
