The Union of Private Sector Employees in Chania calls for participation to the strike demonstration organized by worker’s unions on Wednesday, May 1st, at 10:00 a.m. on Old Town’s Market Square.
May Day is not a public holiday, it is a strike!
130 years after the Athens May Day demonstrations and the struggle for the 8-hour work day, we are faced with the EU’s full frontal assault on our labour rights, faithfully followed by the current ND government and all previous bourgeois governments.
Their aim is to abolish the 8-hour work day, to make working out of schedule the norm, to introduce 13-hour, 6-day and 7-day work weeks, to criminalise our struggles demanding for better working and living conditions. They are passing laws and directives that have found and find the support of the employer-run company unons who serve big capital interests and the policies of the bourgeois parties.
From Chicago in 1886 to the Athens May Day of 1894, from May 1936 in Thessaloniki to the May Day of 1944 with the heroic sacrifice of 200 communists in Caesariani, the working class has inscribed with indelible ink of its blood the most brilliant pages of class struggle, of organised struggle and demands, which no state and employer’s intimidation or repression can stop.
The workers show their strength by organizing and fighting!
After the hugely succesfull strike on 28 February and 17 April we sent a message that our lifes are more important than capitalist profit!
We are already experiencing the consequences of the intensification of the imperialist wars and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East with deeper and deeper involvement of our country for the benefit of the shipowners, industrialists, businessmen and their interests in the region.
Whilst inflation and successive increases in food, energy and rent prices are literally squeezing our income, with wages being enough for a maximum of 15 days’ wages, the big business groups in all sectors – including food and supermarket companies – are increasing their profitability.
At the same time, they are trying to put into practice the policy of commercialisation and privatisation of health care and to abolish equal access for patients to health services by implementing the Joint Ministerial Decision on the paid operation of evening surgeries.
In other words, those who can afford to ‘buy’ their health care survive, while those who cannot will die waiting for their turn.
At the same time, the government of the Nea Dimokratia starts the process of implementing the anti-worker law of ministers Vroutsis-Ahtsioglou, which removed from the unions the rights of signing a National General Collective Labour Agreement – the minimum wage is now determined by the government based on the “strength” of the Greek economy.
Based on this, the government of Nea Dimokratia announced its decision to keep the nominal minimum gross wage pegged at €830, down 26.77% from the 2010 wage, imposing by force on the majority of workers to live on €706 net per month.
This policy is the reason why masses of workers are taking to the streets and fighting for their modern needs.
May Day is the beacon of the continuous class struggle. The attempt of the Nea Dimokratia government to abolish the May Day strike, based on a law of Syriza, and turn it into a public holiday will not pass.
Our struggles must continue and grow stronger. We fight for:
- Better working and living conditions, for collective bargaining with wage increases and extension of rights.
- The immediate abolition of the anti-worker laws that smash the 8-hour working day and criminalise trade union activity, prohibiting the right to strike. We fight for 7-hour – 5-hour – 35-hour work work weeks as the development of science and technology allow.
- Immediate measures against inflation.
- Direct measures for the health and safety of workers at work.
- Disengagement from imperialist planning and war conflicts.
- Solidarity with the people of Palestine in their just and hard struggle against the murdering state of Israel, which is slaughtering them with support from NATO and the EU.
Justice is on our side. We will win!
Union contact information
ΣΥΝΔΕΣΜΟΣ ΙΔΙΩΤΙΚΩΝ ΥΠΑΛΛΗΛΩΝ ΧΑΝΙΩΝ
(PRIVATE SECTOR EMPLOEE UNION OF CHANIA)
Markou Mpotsari 68, 73134, Chania
Member of the Federation of Private Sector Employees in Greece,
Member of the Chania Labour Unions Organization
( Email : [email protected] )
Contact phone numbers: +30 698 200 1586 – +30 697 667 7919
WhatsApp announcements: https://chat.whatsapp.com/ETm9lWVcIMm9BRJz6qWFzi