Greek strikes see huge turnout as workers plan further escalation against the government

Greece‘s All Workers Militant Front (PAME) has said the Greek national strike on Wednesday 28 February was the “biggest strike in recent years, with rivers of workers flooding Athens”.

Greek strike: everybody out

As the Guardian reported:

Tens of thousands of people… joined protests in Greece, with strike action bringing the country to a standstill, on the first anniversary of a deadly train crash blamed on decades of poor railway management.

As church bells tolled in memory of the 57 men and women who lost their lives in an accident deemed entirely preventable, protesters gathered in major cities to demand justice for the victims.

In Athens, where clashes erupted outside parliament, 20,000 marched through the city centre before convening outside the central offices of Hellenic Train. Many chanted “their profits, our lives”, referring to a utility acquired by the Italian state at the height of Greece’s sovereign debt crisis.

The below article is a piece from PAME, guest-posted on the Canary.

Flooding Athens with workers

The biggest strike in recent years with rivers of workers and youth flooding Athens, Thessaloniki, Larissa, Heraklion, Patras, Ioannina and dozens of cities across the country, sent a message of disobedience and conflict by putting forward the slogan “their profits or our lives”:

One year after the crime in Tempe, the anger is growing. Double to the relatives of the 57 dead, the country paralysed to make it clear that any attempt at a cover-up will not pass, no one will go unpunished, demanding that all political and criminal responsibility for the crime be held immediately.

No cover-up, no cover-up attempted by the government will be tolerated.

Today’s strike sent a strong message of condemnation of the policy that is crushing the lives of the people. The complete freeze of factories and workplaces and the large participation in the strike rallies surpassed all previous mobilisations because the cup has overflowed in the sectors and workplaces.

Greek strike: the escalation will continue

We continue. The strike with a record number of strike decisions of the Workers’ Regional Union Centres and Federations and the hundreds of public and private sector unions is a milestone. A station of a great struggle and a station of a new escalation.

Escalation that comes with the daily mobilisations in the workplaces for the signing of collective agreements with wage increases, for the protection of the right to work, for work and life with rights. Escalation with a new National strike on 17 April:

Basically, the only “union” organisation that did not participate in this huge strike of 28 February was the ETUC member in Greece, GSEE.

With our action to become the worst nightmare of all those who dread the struggles that put forward the needs of the workers, who go against profits and exploitation, who question the politics of profit, of wars, of the involvement of our country in the wars, of the “fiscal balance” of poverty for the many.

In these struggles the workers can and must come together with the popular strata of the city and village, with the students and pupils, against their common enemies, the business groups and their governments.

Featured image and additional images via PAME