ATHENS – Thousands of Greek seafarers supported by other workers as well as students blockaded, from early on Wednesday morning, the ships and ferries in the Piraeus port of the capital Athens.
It was the start of a two-day national strike against the Greek government’s barbaric austerity measures.
The two-day Wednesday-Thursday strike was called for by PAME, the Greek Communist Party’s trade union sector, and organised by several trade unions, amongst them the two seafarers’ unions PEMEN (crews) and Stephenson (engine room).
Last Tuesday a Piraeus one-judge Court had declared the seafarers’ strike ‘illegal’; but the unions went on to stage one of the most successful strikes in Piraeus and not a single ship sailed out of the port.
That was a turning point in the developing national strike which is carried out by a number of trade unions such as construction, engineers and others.
The leaders of the GSEE (Greek TUC) have declared themselves against the strike.
The ADEDY (public sector trade unions federation) had called a national strike for Thursday along with rallies in every major Greek city.
All public sector trade unions have pledged support to the strike including civil servants, local government workers, teachers and health workers.
In one of the biggest ever workers’ demonstrations in the port of Piraeus last Wednesday morning, thousands of workers marched through the port and the city centre shouting slogans against the IMF, the European Commission and the government’s austerity measures.
Workers stood in front of ships safeguarding the strike. No attempts were made against them by the notorious armed Port Police, military commando units of the Greek Navy, who have attacked seafarers’ mobilisations in the past.
At the strike rally Thanasis Evaggelakis, secretary of the PEMEN trade union, said that ‘with the support of PAME seafarers wage a just struggle; the right to strike is not to be decided in Courts but in the ships’ decks.’
Evaggelakis attacked the leaders of the GSEE, of the National Seafarers Federation and of the Piraeus Trades Council who refused to call a strike.
He emphasised that ‘the big task of the working class is to take political power, to socialise the basic means of production with central planning and popular control.’
Under the impact of the strike, late on Wednesday the Piraeus Trades Council voted to declare a 24-hour strike for Thursday.
Early on the same day in Athens hundreds of angry hotel workers demonstrated outside the luxury hotels where the representatives of the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission are staying engaged in talks with the government of Yiorghos Papandreou over the conditions of an IMF-ECB loan to avert the bankruptcy of the Greek state.
Workers demanded the expulsion of the imperialists’ agencies from the country.
Throughout Greece last Wednesday workers and students staged ‘symbolic occupations’ of many government and local government buildings for a few hours at the time.
In several large cities, such as Patras in western Greece, in the north and on the island of Crete, workers occupied the news rooms of radio and TV stations and read out calls for all to join the strikes and the demonstrations.
Figures released by the state Statistics Institute last Tuesday showed a huge rise in unemployment which last January was officially recorded at 11.3 per cent an increase of some 25 per cent as compared to January 2009.
Trade Unions have repeatedly stated that this figure is near 18 per cent since the Statistics Institute is quite eclectic to the data it employs. Unemployment in the 16-24 age group was officially recorded at over 30 per cent, a rise of over 50 per cent compared to January 2009.
As the strikes and workers’ mobilisations were developing throughout Greece last Wednesday, the Greek ‘socialist’ Prime Minister Yiorghos Papandreou, also the head of the Socialist International, found time in between the talks with the IMF, to congratulate the Minister for the Protection of the Citizen Michalis Chrysochoides for his good work against ‘terrorism’.
Papandreou spoke of the fight of the Greek government for safety, security and law and order, and congratulated the police and security forces on the anniversary of the imperialist-backed, bloody military coup of 43 years ago, that installed a junta which ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, when it was overthrown by the revolutionary action of the workers and students.
