Workers Revolutionary Party - 7th week on strike for Greek admin workers

The News Line: News Tuesday, 22 October 2013 7th week on strike for Greek admin workers

Athens University administration workers and their children marching on Saturday

ADMINISTRATION workers at eight Greek universities are continuing their strike for the seventh consecutive week against the government’s plan to sack some 1,500 of them.

Having failed to break them with threats and public persecutor’s investigations, the government is pushing through the Vouli (Greek parliament) a Bill to force administrative workers to register at a government internet site; the government will then pick up the 1,500 to be sacked out of that registration list!

Speaking to the News Line last Saturday Zakharias Trigazis, a member of the executive of the Universities’ Administrative Workers’ Federation, said that such outrageous dictatorial schemes and actions are typical of the present Greek coalition government.

Zakharias said that their fight will continue ‘until the government’s policy of sackings is defeated’ and called for a ‘front of social struggles’ to unite all workers.

The Universities’ Administrative Workers’ Federation have lodged a law suit against the government’s Bill stating that it is unconstitutional.

Last Saturday over 1,000 workers and university students marched through the Athens city centre chanting ‘no sackings – for strikes and occupations’.

The striking Athens University and Athens Polytechnic administrative workers were joined by delegations from the secondary teachers union and some other trade union branches.

The GSEE (Greek TUC) have announced a one-day general strike on 6 November despite the opposition of its president Yiannis Panagopoulos.

The more the crisis deepens in Greece the more the trade union leading bureaucrats are turning against workers’ mobilisations.

An Athens co-operative daily which published Panagopoulos’ opposition to the general strike, was denounced by the president of the GSEE who stated that ‘if trouble makers invade the GSEE building then newspapers who print such stories will be responsible.’

Panagopoulos did not dispute the truth of the newspaper’s story.