Unions vow to fight bankers’ government

 

Thousands of working-class people marched through central Athens today as their general strike brought Greece to a standstill.

Trade unions began the 24-hour action a day after banker Prime Minister Lucas Papademos’s three-week-old unelected government promised “deep and broad reforms” to its EU and IMF creditors in return for the next part of a multibillion-euro loan.

Over 15,000 members of the All Workers Militant Front (PAME) took to the streets of Athens shouting: “No more poverty, no more burdens, time for a new society” as they passed parliament.

They were followed by a separate group of 5,000 demonstrators from the country’s two biggest labour federations and left-wing parties.

Another 10,000 people took part in similar demonstrations in Thessaloniki.

The government enraged Greek citizens on Wednesday night by saying it would continue to make deep cuts despite record unemployment and nearly three years of continuous recession.

It intends to cut public-sector workers’ pay even further, make more staff redundant and strong-arm people into paying a new property tax by threatening to switch off their electricity.

The PAME activists and their supporters in Athens pledged yesterday to fight the latest assault on living standards and defend wages and hard-won labour rights enshrined in collective agreements.

They urged people not to pay the new property tax and proposed a “wave of civil disobedience” so that authorities would “not dare to approach our neighbourhoods to cut off the electricity supply.”

The trade unionists insisted that the “profits of big capital must be taxed at a 45 per cent rate, while families earning less than €40,000 (£34,000) should not be taxed at all.”

PAME said in a statement that “the workers do not have anything hopeful to expect” from the Papademos administration.

“Down with the government and the parties of the plutocracy — elections now.”

foreigneditor@peoples-press.com

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