TENS of thousands of workers with their families, students and youth demonstrated throughout Greece on Sunday against the government of K Mitsotakis whom they hold responsible for the railway massacre in Tempi two weeks ago with over 100 people dead, most of them university students.
The General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE), representing private sector employee unions, and the federation of public sector employees (ADEDY), have called a 24-hour strike for Thursday March 16 because of the devastating train collision in Tempi that left so many dead.
In Athens over 20,000 workers and university students staged a militant rally on Sunday, organised by the Athens and Piraeus Trades Unions Councils following a proposal by PAME, the Greek Communist Party’s (KKE) trade union section.
The the main slogans of the rally were: ‘This crime will not be covered up – Against the criminal policy of profit’ and ‘We shall become the voice of the dead’.
A mass march followed to the Greek Railways HQ.
More mass rallies and marches have been organised in the Athens and Piraeus districts and many Greek cities.
The speakers at the Athens rally, who support the PAME-KKE, condemned the government’s policies and emphasised that the struggle continues in next Thursday’s 24-hour General Strike.
One of the speakers, Kostas Toulgaridis, a teacher and Regional Councillor of Attica of the ‘Anti-Capitalist Overthrow’, insisted that the struggle must now be for the overthrow of the government by escalating the General Strike and for the overthrow of capitalism.
Toulgaridis called for General Strikes every Thursday and mass rallies every Sunday.
He also called for ‘public railways and public transport’.
He was followed by Michalis Rizos, a hospital doctor, President of the Attikon hospital trade union and executive member of the anti-capitalist ANTARSYA, who also called for nationalisation of the Hellenic Train under workers’ control.
Rizos also called for the setting up of a Trades Unions Centre to co-ordinate the fight.
Their demands for nationalisation drew a response from the last speaker at the Athens rally, Markos Bekris the President of the Piraeus port workers’ union and President of the Piraeus Trades Council.
Bekris said that there were fatal accidents too in times when railways were state owned.
He also rejected the call for a fight to overthrow the hated Mitsotakis regime who are preparing a Bill for the privatisation of water supply.
Incredibly, given that the previous day, Saturday, in France over one million had marched against President Macron’s pensions reform Bill, none of the speakers in Athens related the struggle of the French workers to the uprising rallies and marches of the workers in Greece.
And no speaker felt the urge to point to the collapse of the SVB bank in California and the subsequent developments despite the fact that the Athens stock exchange dived by over 2.5% last Friday and continued the sharp fall early on Monday.
The conditions in Greece have reached the point for the overthrow of the EU/IMF-installed Mitsotakis regime and its replacement by a workers’ government through a General Political Strike.
The wretched leaders of the GSEE (Greek TUC) have now called a 24-hour strike for this Thursday, 16 March, along with the ADEDY (Public Sector Federation of Trades Unions).
It promises to be a colossal demonstration of the power of the working class and its determination to get rid of the ‘government of murderers’. GSEE, which is wrapping up its four-day annual congress, will also hold a rally at Syntagma Square for 11am the same day with the motto ‘All Lives Matter’.
‘For all workers of Greece, the in-depth investigation and the attribution of accountability, as well as the implementation of measures to prevent having to mourn over lost human lives, is a key demand by society and will be the focus of our strike action,’ it said in a statement on Sunday.
On Saturday evening, the federation of public sector employees (ADEDY) also called a 24-hour strike on Thursday, March 16, over the deadly Tempi train collision accident. The national strike will affect all public entities and services.
In a statement over the strike, ADEDY demanded: ‘Those who are truly guilty over the train accident should be found and made accountable, while the privatisations and the operation of public services on private business criteria, which puts profit over people, should end.
‘The Tempi crime will not be covered up. We demand the life we deserve, a life with contemporary rights, and a better future for us and our children.’
