HUNDREDS of armed riot police were employed last Friday morning in Athens in a series of tear-gas and truncheon attacks against protesting state teachers, school guards and sacked tax offices’ cleaners.
Riot police made over 20 arrests, including Grigoris Kalomiris, the Vice President of ADEDY (public sector confederation of trades unions), and the President of the teachers’ union OLME Themis Kotsyfakis.
Six protesting workers were taken to hospital, including the President of the Local Government federation of trades unions Themis Balasopoulos and the President of the Aghios Demetrios, an Athens borough, local government workers’ union Christos Efthymiou.
The riot police frenzy started early on Friday morning when about 20 teachers raised their banner against mass sackings in the Reforms Ministry’s courtyard.
They were set upon by riot police and all teachers were arrested, only to be released a few hours later.
At midday last Friday about 800 state school teachers, school guards, sacked cleaners and other workers, besieged the Finance Ministry in protest against the visiting team of the troika EC-IMF-ECB representatives who were holding talks with the Greek Finance Minister.
In order to get the troika team out of the Finance Ministry building, squads of riot police staged a fierce truncheon and spray tear-gas attack on workers.
It was here that the six workers were hit by police on the head and chest or suffered breathing difficulties and were taken to hospital.
Protesting workers then marched 500 yards back to the Reforms Ministry building.
Once there they were attacked by riot police and pushed to the opposite side of the street and on the pavement and ‘kettled’.
Workers who protested and tried to break out, were at once sprayed with tear-gas and pushed back. Riot police did not attempt any arrests.
Then trade union leaders decided to stage a protest at the Athens Police HQs, to obtain the release of ADEDY vice-president Kalomiris, and protesters moved towards the Vouli (Greek parliament) building and on to the main square.
Riot police followed and kept on spraying tear gas on the feet of protesters and urging them to move on. Protesters shouted ‘junta! junta!’ against the riot police.
At the Athens Police HQs Kolomiris, who is also a city councillor, was charged with ‘disobedience’ and released. A date will be fixed for his trial.
At the meeting with the troika representatives the Reforms Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis proudly proclaimed that he had succeeded since last summer in placing over 21,000 civil servants, teachers and other public sector workers, on the so-called ‘mobility schemes’.
This is a government device where workers are laid off work and for a period of seven months receive just 70 per cent of their salary.
At the end of that period, which is the end of March, the government says they will be either placed at different posts or sacked.
The ADEDY have called a two-day national strike of all public sector workers for 22 and 23 of March when the ‘mobility scheme’ period ends. But the GSEE (Greek TUC) bureaucratic leaders have refused to discuss strike action.
In a statement issued last Friday ADEDY says that a ‘pogrom of violence and terrorism was un-leashed by the government of the EC-IMF-ECB austerity measures accords, in order to impose mass sackings’.
Also last Friday Greek railway workers staged a protest at the State Privatisations Fund TAIPED offices in Athens as part of their 4-hour national stoppage against the sell off of the Greek Railway Organisation OSE.
But the President of the Railways Workers Federation POS P. Paraskevo-poulos speaking after a meeting with the head of TAIPED, said nothing about privatisation and instead talked about ‘a fight to preserve national collective agreements’.
It was left up to POS Executive member, and Greek Communist Party trade unionist, P. Panag-oulias to say that they were told by the TAIPED Director that the privatisation of the Greek Railways was a decision taken by the EC and by the Greek government. Panagoulias said that ‘if we are to stop the selling off we must fight’.
Neither of the railway trades union leaders mentioned how they were proposing the fight would have to be carried out.
Last Wednesday some 700 dockers from several Greek ports staged a national 24-hour strike and a demonstration in Athens against the announced privatisation of the port of Piraeus the biggest in Greece and in the whole eastern Medit-erranean dockers marched to Vouli in an angry and determined mood the dominant slogan they shouted was ‘government and troika are thugs – they want Greece a colony!’
They also frequently chanted slogans that they were not going to vote for any minister or parliamentary deputy who would vote for privatisation.
Dockers were joined by delegations of sacked school guards and cleaners.
Speaking to demonstrators the President of the Federation of Port Workers OMYLE Yiorghos Yeorgakopoulos said that the government ‘creates an absolute private monopoly’ at the Greek ports but did not mention any future mobilisations at all.
Likewise the Piraeus Trades Council have refused to mobilise the workers of this important city-port against privatisation in unity with public sector workers, despite the fact that all the city’s unions as well as professional associations, have protested against the sell out.
What is being organised is the selling off of the port to the Chinese marine state firm COSCO who already control one of the two state of the art container terminals.
But the PASOK social-democratic party, the minor partner in the Greek two-party coalition government, said that they are against the privatisation of the port of Piraeus. On this feeble promise the trades union bureaucracy is stalling the dockers’ fight.