Update on the strike on February 28, 2024
On Wednesday, February 28, 2024, exactly one year after the prescribed crime in Tempe with the train collision that took dozens of human lives and mainly young people, grandiose strike rallies took place throughout the country where thousands of workers, students, pensioners, self-employed shouted once again: “Their profits or our lives”, embracing not only the incident that took place on the altar of the profits of large business groups, But also the issues that are currently burning grassroots households, such as high prices, the need for wage increases, the right to public and free education. The magnificent strike rallies, the shocking interventions in Tempe and in train stations throughout the country leave a valuable legacy for our country.
The images with the overcrowded streets, with factories, depots, ports, etc. that have stopped, give breaths of optimism to workers and youth.
This strike came as a continuation of the intense militant processes that have been taking place especially lately.
The mass mobilizations of farmers, youth, health workers, workers in large workplaces, the strike confirmed that the organized people, who are struggling and demanding, are the real opposition to the anti-grassroots policy of the government but also to the consensus generously offered by SYRIZA, PASOK and the other parties of the system, supporting the criminal policy of profit. which leads the people to greater losses and suffering.
In the streets, workers met who in a number of places and sectors have made continuous strikes and other mobilizations, demanding Collective Agreements, wage increases, health and safety measures.
They protested together with today’s students and tomorrow’s workers, completing 8 weeks of great militant action against the bill on private universities.
They were joined by the teachers, who once again went on strike, strengthening the common action for the education of modern grassroots needs.
Next to them were again the subsistence farmers, who do not give up after 35 days at the blockades. Who continue the struggle with the momentum and from the unprecedented rally in Syntagma.
It was also a response to those who wanted this strike to turn into a “modest ceremony” for crime in Tempe and to keep untouched the politics that crush every aspect of people’s lives. To erase the slogan “Our lives or their profits”, to facilitate the cover-up.
After this successful battle, the escalation is organized under even better conditions, with the next major stops being the strike on April 17 and the strike on May Day. To ignite new hotbeds of confrontation with employers and the anti-grassroots policy of the government and its parties.
As of today, this great effort is being organized, with greater confidence in the power of the people. With optimism that the current of questioning the dominant policy will grow even stronger in the coming period and that the real culprit for every popular problem will be found even more aggressively: the profitability of the groups, the barbaric system and the state that serve it.
Expression of Solidarity in the great, national strike on February 28, 2024
UITBB expresses its undivided solidarity with the working class and people of Greece, in the great, national strike on February 28, 2024, which marks one year since the crime in Tempi, which claimed the lives of 57 people, most of them young people and students. A year later, the cover-up effort is in full swing. But the people of Greece will not allow the crime to be forgotten. Those responsible must be punished!
UITBB and its member-organisation in Greece, the Greek Federation of Construction Workers and Allied Trades, declare that they will not tolerate any cover-up of the criminal policies that measure everything according to the profit of the capitalists, not hesitating to sacrifice human lives in the process.
“Our life is not a cost.”
Once again it is proved that the capital does not hesitate to sacrifice countries, lives, and properties, for the interests of the few and the increase of profit. What happened in Greece in Tempi is nothing but a crime, and a sacrifice of people on the altar of profit which will be paid, as usual, by the working class.
The strikers are demanding effective measures to deal with high prices, as well as measures for education, for health and safety in the workplaces, for increase in salaries and much more.
We wish every success in the struggle of the workers. We stand with you, comrades.
Michalis Papanikolaou
General Secretary