Category: Greece
Athens brought to a standstill as Greek transport workers strike over labor reform bill (VIDEO)
worker | June 16, 2021 | 9:38 pm | Greece, Labor | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/news/526696-greece-athens-protest-workers-bill/

Athens brought to a standstill as Greek transport workers strike over labor reform bill (VIDEO)

Athens brought to a standstill as Greek transport workers strike over labor reform bill (VIDEO)
The Greek capital has been brought to a standstill as striking public transport staff down tools and take to the streets to voice their opposition to a labor reform bill which is being brought before parliament on Wednesday.

Public sector transport workers went on strike for the second time in a week as a controversial bill, which seeks to modernize the country’s labor rules, goes before parliament. The workers held banners and placards aloft, chanting slogans as they walked through the city center.

Ferries, buses and trains services were all suspended as workers downed tools. Major arteries of the city were also blocked by marching demonstrators disrupting road traffic. Workers from other sectors have also held stoppages and are expected to join the protests later today before the bill goes in front of lawmakers.

Athenians also took to the streets last Thursday as lawmakers prepared to discuss the proposed labor reforms which have been described by trade unions as a “monstrosity.” 

ALSO ON RT.COMAthens paralyzed by striking public sector workers taking to streets to protest against new labor bill (VIDEO)ADEDY, the union organizing the strike, invited workers, with the exception of teachers who are overseeing exams, to join the protest and a 24-hour-strike in several statements on Tuesday, blasting the government’s attempts to block the protest movement as illegal.

“The terrorism that the government tried to exert on the workers, through the court appeal, fell into the void. They will receive the answer tomorrow with the mass participation of the workers in the strike and in the rallies,” a statement read.

One of the most controversial parts of the bill sees workers allowed to do up to 10 hours work a day and less time on another day. The bill would also see the introduction of a “digital work card” to monitor working hours and increase legal overtime to 150 hours a year. Unions fear workers may be forced to work longer hours.

The government claims that the new legislation would bring greater flexibility and reflect changes in working habits. “The only thing this bill does is it tries to give workers and employers a degree of freedom on how to arrange the eight-hour workday,” Development Minister Adonis Georgiadis said in May.

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Requisition of private health sector, mass hirings in public hospitals are necessary, says KKE leader Koutsoumbas
worker | April 7, 2021 | 8:39 pm | Communist Party Greece (KKE), Greece, In Defense of Communism | Comments closed

http://www.idcommunism.com/2021/04/requisition-of-private-health-sector-mass-hirings-in-public-hospitals-necessary-says-kke-koutsoumbas.html

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Requisition of private health sector, mass hirings in public hospitals are necessary, says KKE leader Koutsoumbas

 

Mass hiring in public hospitals, the immediate requisition of the private health sector and the inclusion of healthcare personnel in the arduous and hazardous jobs social insurance category are the measures that are necessary today, pointed out the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Dimitris Koutsoumbas during a visit today, World Health Day, in Evangelismos hospital in Athens.

Talking to reporters the General Secretary said: “Today, on World Health Day, we are here at Evangelismos hospital in Athens to express our solidarity with the struggle of the doctors, nurses and other hospital staff for their huge contribution in pandemic conditions but also in every other phase in the life of this country, for the protection of health and the protection of Greek people’s lives,”

Dimitris Koutsoumbas added that “the doctors, the nurses who fight this battle day and night with self-sacrifice do not need fake applause, empty words and congratulations. They need mass hiring in public hospitals,” underlining that what is needed is the immediate requisition of the private health sector in the fight against the pandemic and the inclusion of healthcare personnel in the arduous and hazardous jobs social insurance category.

Addressing Evangelismos’ staff, he stressed out the decisive contribution of the health-workers in the protection of Greek people’s health, hailing the great and invaluable contribution which took place under very difficult conditions.

The KKE leader also emphasized on the necessity of solidarity and common struggle within the workers-people’s movement, for the protection of public health and people’s rights, against authoritarianism and repression. “All together, united, we can fight and pave the way. We may wear masks, but our covered mouths have a voice”, he pointed out.

 

IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM ©

May Day in Athens, Greece
worker | May 3, 2020 | 6:59 pm | Communist Party Greece (KKE), Greece, International Workers' Day | Comments closed

100 YEARS KKE – A century of struggles and sacrifices
worker | January 19, 2018 | 8:10 pm | Communist Party Greece (KKE), Greece | Comments closed

Friday, January 19, 2018

100 YEARS KKE – A century of struggles and sacrifices

 https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/01/100-years-kke-century-of-struggles-and.html
The text below is a translated version of the first chapter of the Declaration of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece for the Party’s 100th anniversary. The Declaration was published and circulated with the weekend edition of “Rizospastis” on 13-14th January 2018.
 
This year the KKE completes a century of struggles and sacrifices, remaining the only actually new Party of the Greek society, because it is the only one that struggles for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. It was founded in a period when the flame of the October Socialist Revolution in 1917 gave a boost to the revolutionary labor movement internationally as well as in Greece.
With the foundation of the KKE, the working class acquired for the first time her own party in our country. From the first day of its foundation, the KKE firmly struggles for the only progressive future for humanity, so that the working class and the popular strata will be saved from the torments of exploitation, oppression, poverty, unemployment, state violence and repression, wars.
It fights for the abolition of any mode of exploitation and repression, for a new organisation of society, with social ownership in the means of production, in the land, through the scientific central planning of economy, with the active participation of the workers in the organisation and direction of social production.
It fights for socialism-communism, the only society which can ensure job for everyone, according to each one’s specialization, with actual free time and enjoying high quality, free of charge social services of Health and Education, Sports, cultural activity, housing, vacation and high living standards in general, responsible participation to the organs of management and control in the whole climax of the workers’ state.
The KKE hold high the flag of socialism-communism, even when the counterrevolutionary overthrow in the Soviet Union and the other countries of socialist construction was at her peak. The KKE had collectively conquered the needed class criterion and finally clashed with anticommunism, the domestic and internationalism opportunism which was projecting “perestroika”, the vehicle of counterrevolution, as progress and socialist renewal.
The KKE came into collision with the bourgeois and opportunist apologists of the capitalist system who were supporting that the “end of history”, the end of class struggle, had come. It highlighted that nobody can stop the course of revolutionary class struggle in historical evolution towards socialism-communism.
It highlighted that socialism, the immature level of communism remains necessary, realistic, hopeful. It illuminated that socialism’s necessity doesn’t depend on each time’s correlation of class struggle in a country or internationally, a factor which is undoubtedly crucial about when a socialist revolution can be erupted, under what conditions it can win in a country or group of countries.
KKE projected that the working class, which creates the social product, is the only social force that can organise economy and society, having as a motive the satisfaction of the more and more increasing social needs. It is the class which can correctly estimate and ensure the interests of the popular strata of the city and rural areas.
The KKE, strongly believing in the right and the capability of the working class to know and change the world, fights from the very first time of its foundation so that it (working class) will be prepared through the daily class struggles as a leading force of socialist construction. It asserts and fights for the development of the scientific knowledge of the workers, for their physical and intellectual abilities, for their cultural development and cultivation of their esthetic criterion. It underlines and contributes so that the working class can utilize and use the book, new technologies, the internet.
The KKE highlighted and highlights the decay of capitalism, the relative stagnation and crisis in relation to the progress that can be made if capitalist ownership and the motive of profit are abolished.
Above all, with its positions and activity, the KKE illuminated that the only way that leads to social liberation is the way of socialist revolution, of the planned and organised revolt and attack of the working class and her social allies for the overthrow of the capitalist class’ power.
The KKE is fighting on a daily basis for the development of the objective factor (labor movement, alliance with popular strata of the middle class), so that it will be ready, in circumstances of capitalist power’s shaking, to correspond to its duty as a driving force of the victorious socialist revolution. It gives the fight daily in order to justify its pioneering role as a visionary, but also as an organiser of the struggle for the ultimate revolutionary overthrow of capitalist barbarity, for the construction of socialism-communism.
Translation: In Defense of Communism.
 
* The Declaration of the Central Committee for the 100 years of the KKE will be presented during a political and cultural event at the Municipal Theatre of Piraeus, on Monday 23 January 2018, at 7.00 pm. 
Thousands of workers across Greece joined PAME demonstrations against the government’s new bill
worker | January 15, 2018 | 10:06 pm | Greece, PAME | Comments closed

Monday, January 15, 2018

Thousands of workers across Greece joined PAME demonstrations against the government’s new bill

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/01/thousands-of-workers-across-greece.html
A powerful message to the coalition government of SYRIZA-ANEL as well as to the employers was sent by thousands of workers, students, pensioners and unemployed people who joined the demonstrations organised by the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) across Greece. 
 
In Athens and other Greek cities numerous rallies took place against the new antiworkers’ governmental bill which was passed today by a majority of deputies at the Parliament. The bill includes an amendment which aims to abolish the sacred right of the working people to strike.
In Athens and Thessaloniki thousands of protesters marched in the streets shouting “Hands off the right of strike”, condemning also the sellout pro-governmental trade-unionism of GSEE and ADEDY which continuously undermine the labor movement’s rights.
 
Below you can see photos from the demonstrations as they were published in 902 portal. 
 
In Thessaloniki:
 
 
 
Yes Man: Eurogroup’s Dijsselbloem admits that “with Tsipras almost everything has been easier”
worker | January 15, 2018 | 10:03 pm | Greece, Syriza | Comments closed

Monday, January 15, 2018

Yes Man: Eurogroup’s Dijsselbloem admits that “with Tsipras almost everything has been easier”

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/01/yes-man-eurogroups-dijsselbloem-admits.html
“Feel like home”. PM Tsipras welcomes Jeroen Dijssebloem.
The outgoing Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem admitted something that everybody knew: The fact that the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government of Alexis Tsipras was easily submitted to the demands of the creditors thus doing the “dirty job” on behalf of the capital by imposing new harsh antipeople-antiworkers’ measures.
In an interview with the “Financial Times” on Friday, the former Dutch finance minister talked about the shambolic negotiations with the Tsipras government in the first half of 2016, as well as his tenuous relations with Yanis Varoufakis, then Greece’s finance minister, generated immediate reverberations in Athens.

“Prime Minister (Alexis) Tsipras and, of course, (current Greek finance minister) Euclid Tsakalotos, have completely changed the relationship with the European partners. Almost everything has been easier since … it’s a completely different situation,” he was quoted by FT as saying.

Hands Off the Right of Strike: Militant demonstrations across Greece against Government, EU and Capitalists
worker | January 12, 2018 | 7:17 pm | Communist Party Greece (KKE), Greece, PAME, Syriza | Comments closed

Friday, January 12, 2018

Hands Off the Right of Strike: Militant demonstrations across Greece against Government, EU and Capitalists

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/01/hands-off-right-of-strike-militant.html
Militant strike demonstrations took place earlier on Friday in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities in Greece, as thousands of workers gave a decisive response against the antipeople-antiworkers’ plans of the government, the EU and the big capital.
In Athens, the demonstrators gathered at Omonoia square and marched through the center’s major streets. The KKE General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas attended the rally, while the demonstrators announced a resolution regarding the prosecution of the palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi by the Israeli authorities.
The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), which leads powerful class-oriented trade unionist activities against the new bill submitted in the Parliament by the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government, commented:
PAME welcomes the workers who went on strike across Greece and defied employers’ intimidations and pressures in the workplaces. The workers who overcame the undermining of the strike by the unions controlled by the employers and the government. The workers who massively participated in the strike rallies Regional Trade Union Centers, National Federations and Industrial Unions, against the new antiworkers’ measures of the SYRIZA-ANEL Government that were submitted to Parliament today.
With today’s strike, a clear message was sent that we will not Surrender our trade union rights and freedoms and the right to strike to the employers and their state.
PAME’s big strike demonstrations across Greece were the continuation of the militant actions of the last period. They were massive and militant mobilizations against the antiworkers’ government, which along with the other bourgeois political parties have voted the memorandums, against the dirty role of their forces in the trade union movement. That’s why they attacked with lies against PAME, against the class-oriented movement.
Anti-workers measures are prerequisites for the growth of their profits and needs, for the capitalist development. That is why the capitalists directed the measures to be brought by the government as “long-term demands of the business community”, demanding them to vote in favour of the bill. Together with them are their people in the trade union movement, the right hand of the bosses. GSEE-ADEDY-members of the ETUC in Greece – fought furiously against the proposals for strike, they made every effort in order to pass the bill in silence without any resistance. Today, they did no tstrike and went to work.
We continue our fight! We will not stop!
On Monday 15/1 day of voting in the Parliament, PAME calls workers, unemployed, retired, youth in big Demonstration.