The Economic Crisis, Class Struggle Heats Up in Greece

Politics / Global Debt Crisis
Jun 09, 2010 - 04:30 AM
By: Global_Research

Dimitris Fasfalis writes: Workers in Greece today stand in the forefront of the converging European class struggles against big capital's attempt to make working people pay the costs of its crisis.

Mobilizations against this austerity drive are spreading across Europe. In France, strikes and demonstrations were held on May 27 and a day of actions is planned for June 24. In Portugal, 300,000 working people demonstrated in the streets of Lisbon on May 30 to express their rejection of the socialist government's austerity plan. In Spain, public employees took to the streets on June 2. In Italy, a national demonstration was held in Rome on June 5, with strikes and other actions planned up to June 14. In Great Britain, the unions and left-wing organizations are organizing a day of demonstrations on June 22. In Romania public employees took to the streets on June 4.

The ongoing resistance in Greece shows labour activists and militants of the anti-capitalist left that their struggles can create new paths forward in determining the outcome of the present economic crisis. The latest 24-hour general strike in Greece, held on May 20, registered a success of the labour movement in overcoming the propaganda campaign of the mass media and the slanders coming from the PASOK (Pan-Hellenic Socialist) government. More than 50,000 people took to the streets in Athens and demonstrations were held in the country's major urban centres.[1] Public school teachers took part massively in the Athens demonstration. The participation in the strike was very high in the public sector but less so in the private. The major trade union federations also organized a day of meetings on June 5. This fight is far from over.

The May 5 General Strike
The general strike and demonstrations on May 5 were an overwhelming success. Launched by the General Confederation of Workers in Greece (GSEE) and the state employees' trade-union (ADEDY), the appeal to cease work for 24 hours was observed massively by both public and private-sector workers. Demonstrations were held in all the major cities across Greece except Larissa: in Tripoli and Patra in the Peloponnese, in Ioannina and Igoumenitsa in Epirus, in Herakleion (Crete), and also in Salonika, the metropolis of Northern Greece, where thousands of demonstrators took to the streets.

It is in Athens, however, where the largest demonstrations were seen. The streets of central Athens were taken over by a human flood of some 250,000 citizens. Its components reflected the working class of the Greek metropolis in all its diversity: workers of the private sector, such as those of the Skaramanga shipyards of the Piraeus, workers of the public utilities and the state, such as those of the electricity company (DEI), the teachers and the nurses of the public health system, unemployed and retired workers, immigrant and undocumented workers, university and high-school students. The slogans coming from the ranks of the demonstration all expressed the people's refusal to pay the costs of the capitalist crisis triggered by global finance: “No to the anti-workers tempest,â€