THE occupation of the Greek State TV and Radio network building HQs (ERT) completed eight days and nights on Tuesday and has entered a most critical stage of its development.
The Greek government is insisting that ERT is shut down with all its 2,800 workers sacked while a much smaller new state TV and radio corporation is being set up.
The Finance Ministry, which is managing ERT, is now offering temporary two-months contracts in the new state TV and radio company, called NERIT, to those willing to break the strike.
The ERT trade union and all media unions have rejected the government’s plans but media union leaders have allowed the national strike to collapse since the federation of print unions did not join the strike and newspapers appeared last Sunday.
The GSEE (Greek TUC) bureaucracy have refused to call a general strike and instead called for a mass meeting at ERT for last night.
The GSEE and some of the media trade union leaders have spread illusions following last Monday’s victory when the Council of State (Greek High Court) ordered the government to allow ERT to function, but accepted that the government could go ahead with the ‘restructuring’ of ERT, that is to sack all workers.
Riot police have occupied ERT transmitters and do not allow the ERT workers’ programme on air. . .
The occupying ERT workers are broadcasting the programmes they produced through internet sites.
Last Tuesday, about 2,000 workers and students gathered at ERT in support of the occupation and an open air assembly meeting took place with many speakers.
Athens university students had organised a march to the ERT building in the evening.
The three leaders of the Greek coalition government parties were to meet on Wednesday evening to consider ERT.
The Revolutionary Marxist League, the Greek secton of the International Committee of the Fourth International, is urging the workers to continue the occupation and to campaign throughout the workers’ movement for an indefinite general strike, to bring down the Samara coalition.
This reactionary gang of Troika supporters must be replaced by a workers’ and small farmers’ government, based on the working class, the youth, the trade unions and the People’s Assemblies.
The working class, which had the strength and determination to force the courts to end the ERT closure, must now use that strength to bring down the coalition in a socialist revolution.
