Colleagues, colleagues,
May Day is a symbol of memory and struggle of workers all over the world, it is the celebration of the working class! It is the day we honor the dead of our class, from the first workers’ May Day in Chicago in 1886, the bloody strikes in May 1936 in Thessaloniki, the 200 executed Communists in Kaisariani, May 1, 1944, the 40 executed in Tripoli on May Day 1944. It is the day that reminds us that all the conquests of our class have come through hard and bloody struggles and are constantly being targeted by capitalists and bourgeois governments.
75 years since the founding of the NATO imperialist killing machine and 25 years since the dismemberment of Yugoslavia by NATO and the EU, the workers and popular strata of us are experiencing the consequences of the imperialist wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the dangerous of Greece’s involvement in them, with increasingly strong support for the pursuits of NATO and the EU, with the dispatch of war material and troops for the benefit of shipowners, industrialists, businessmen and their interests in the region.
We experience poverty and exploitation, forced to live on wages reduced by 25% compared to 2010, to be exact, it has made basic survival goods out of reach, while business groups are making record profits, relying on crushed workers’ rights , to the lack of health and safety measures in the workplace that have led to hundreds of our dead, sick and maimed colleagues. After all, this is the basic condition for disbursing the huge amounts of the Recovery Fund from the business groups, when we are forced to put our hands deep in our pockets to even have a doctor in the afternoon surgeries.
The reactionary directives of the EU with the corresponding anti-labor legislation that all governments and the current one have passed, turn us back 100 years by abolishing the 8-hour working time, with a rubber working time, establishing the 13-hour, 6-day and 7-day work. Laws and guidelines that find the
support for employers’ trade unionists who serve capital and bourgeois party politics. At the same time, a series of anti-labor bills criminalize trade union activity.
For the working class around the world, May Day is a beacon of implacable class struggle. The ND government’s attempt to abolish the May Day strike, based on a SYRIZA law, and turn it into a festive holiday, will not pass. We honor the struggles of our class on the street, with new struggles, claiming the wealth we produce, against the exploitation imposed by capitalists and bourgeois governments.
We fight organized and collectively for:
· Collective Labor Agreements for all workers with wages and labor relations that will cover our needs, safely in the workplaces. 7 hours – 5 days – 35 hours. No tolerance for worker-killing hours, flexible working arrangements and unpaid overtime.
· Universal reset of the three years incorporating the period 2012 – 2023.
· Cheap electricity for the people, with the abolition of indirect taxes (VAT, Special Consumption Tax) and ceilings on energy and fuel prices. Abolition of the Energy exchange.
· The creation of a single exclusively Public energy provider that will utilize all domestic energy sources for the needs of the people. For energy that will be a social good and not a commodity.
· That the lignite units and lignite mines in Megalopolis should not be closed, that no colleague should be left on the street.
· Abolition of VAT and ceilings on the prices of consumer products such as food, baby items, personal hygiene items, etc.
· To prevent the further commercialization of public health and education.
· No to NATO spending – No involvement of Greece in imperialist wars. The frigate “HYDRA” should return.
Solidarity with the people of Palestine, in the just and cruel struggle they are fighting against the murderous state of Israel, which is slaughtering them with the backs of NATO and the EU.
I WANT THE WORKING CLASS, I WANT THE WORKING PRIMARY!
Everyone at the strike rally, Holy Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Tripoli, Petrino Square, 10:30 am
The Board of Directors
