TENS OF thousands of workers and students participated in mass and militant rallies and marches throughout Greece on Wednesday, during a 24-hour national strike in the private industrial sector called by the GSEE (Greek TUC), demanding wage increases and national collective agreements.
The strike was solid in the Greek ports, ferries, railways, building sites, Elefsina shipyards and the Athens Metro. However, participation to the strike was moderate in the refineries and large factories and offices in the Athens-Piraeus industrial zones as the GSEE leaders have long caved in to the bosses and consequently have lost the trust of the workers.
The leaders of the public sector workers’ federation ADEDY refused to join the strike and have called their own 24-hour strike for late May.
In Athens, some 25,000 workers and students joined the three separate strike marches, one by the GSEE, one by the Greek Communist Party (KKE), by far the biggest rally, and the third by a coalition of left-wing trade union branches.
Thousands of armed riot police were mobilised by the Greek government and lined the route of the marches to intimidate demonstrators.
In none of these three rallies speakers called for the need to develop the 24-hour strikes into an indefinite political general strike for the overthrow of the hated government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a self-acclaimed collaborator of the Israeli Netanyahu government and staunch supporter of the Zelensky regime in the Ukraine.
Such is the bankruptcy and treachery of the trade union and KKE leaders in today’s critical conditions of wars and world economic crisis which have driven workers in Greece into poverty that some 75% of the families in the country cannot pay the monthly household bills and rent.
In fact, the 24-hour strikes called by GSEE or ADEDY in Greece are desperate attempts to hold back the rage of the workers and students.
In Thessaloniki, some 3,000 workers and students marched through the city centre calling for the unity of workers and students to defend state and free health service and education. Bus drivers participated in their hundreds, despite a court order by management to declare ‘illegal’ the GSEE strike.
In such workers’ actions and in the enthusiastic presence of the students and youth in the marches, the determination is clear of the working class in Greece to fight head-on the Mitsotakis regime!
