AT A STORMY packed meeting of some 300 delegates on Monday the Greek Public Workers Confederation ADEDY decided to call a national 24-hour strike for today against the barbaric austerity measures agreement accepted by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at Brussels.
There has been not even a word of protest from the GSEE (Greek TUC) leaders. At the ADEDY meeting, hospitals’ and teachers’ delegates blasted the ADEDY leaders for refusing to call for a ‘NO’ vote at the 5 July referendum and for failing to organise strike action. They described how hospitals are falling apart, how social services are obliterated and schools closed down.
Speakers also referred to the fact that the Tsipras-EE agreement includes the repeal of legislation that got back to work the Finance Ministry cleaners, school guards and ERT (state TV-radio) workers. The vast majority of speakers demanded that ADEDY call a 24-hour national strike for today and another 48-hour strike next week. They also demanded that the ADEDY demands a ‘rupture with the European Union and exit from the euro’.
This was supported by the anti-capitalist ANTARSYA speakers but not from the Greek Communist Party (KKE) speakers and the SYRIZA speakers who were content with just a 24-hour strike. Following the meeting ADEDY’s Executive Committee called a national strike for today, with marches and rallies and for ‘meetings and occupations’ on Tuesday at work.
The Pharmacists Association decided to participate in the ADEDY strike. They say that under the new austerity agreement local shops will be obliterated. On Monday night over 3,000 workers and young people demonstrated once again in front of the Vouli (Greek parliament) against Tsipras-EE’s austerity agreement.
The KKE and the anti-capitalist SEK (Socialist Workers Party) did not participate. This time delegations from META (SYRIZA’s trade union faction) and SYRIZA’s youth participated with banners. At the rally trade union speakers demanded an allout fight against the austerity agreement and for an exit from the euro.
A speaker from the Revolutionary Marxist League (RML) demanded a united ‘NO to austerity’ and the calling of an indefinite political general strike for the overthrow of austerity and the treacherous SYRIZA-ANEL government. The RML speaker said that ‘this is the time to form a mass revolutionary movement, a revolutionary party of the 4th International, to smash capitalism and the trade union bureaucracy and go forward to a workers’ and poor farmers’ government’.
The Industry and Energy minister Panayiotis Lafazanis, the leader of SYRIZA’s Left Platform, has called on the Greek Prime Minister and SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras ‘even at this last minute’ to withdraw from the Brussels austerity agreement.
Tsipras will be presenting an austerity agreement Bill today to the Vouli. It is expected that he will receive the votes of the right-wing and social-democratic parties’ votes but that about 30 SYRIZA deputies will vote against or abstain. This means that the Tsipras government will be a minority government.
