HUNDREDS of workers and youth demonstrated in front of the Greek Business Association (SEV) building in Athens on Wednesday afternoon demanding that firms pay workers’ wages and stop bullying staff to vote ‘YES’ in next Sunday’s referendum.
Delegations of ETER (radio technicians) and PEMEN (seafarers) trade union federations participated. In the construction and engineering sections several firms did not pay wages citing the closure of the banks; some firms have put their staff on leave without pay.
The construction workers federation is supporting the KKE (Greek Communist Party) reactionary and counter-revolutionary call for spoiled papers on Sunday’s referendum. The bureaucrats of the GSEE (Greek TUC) declared on Wednesday their opposition to the government’s decision to hold a referendum and called for a ‘YES to Europe’ vote! In a most treacherous and hysterical statement, the bureaucracy has sided completely with the bosses and the troika austerity.
At the ADEDY (public sector trades unions federation) the right-wing along with KKE supporters succeeded in blocking a call for a ‘NO’ vote on Sunday. The Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Marxist league (RML) campaigned in Athens on Wednesday evening with their statement for a ‘NO’-‘OXI’ class vote on Sunday and calling on all working class militants and all those trade unions who have declared for a ‘NO’ vote, to organise immediately to throw out the bureaucracy from the GSEE and ADEDY and establish in the GSEE building a national Workers’ and Trade Unionists’ Conference to organise the fight.
Neither the bosses’ blackmails and the Goebbels-like propaganda of the capitalist mass media, nor the treacherous role of the GSEE and KKE are to put off workers and youth from a ‘NO’-‘OXI’ vote in the referendum.
Large ‘NO’-‘OXI’ banners are being hung on public buildings by the workforce despite managers’ hindrances. Mass rallies throughout Greece for a ‘NO’-‘OXI’ vote are scheduled for Thursday and Friday evenings for the first time with the explicit support of the government party SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left).
