Introductory speech of Giannis Protoulis, member of the PB of the CC of KKE at the meeting held on this topic by the European Communist Action

The governments of all countries in the EU are stepping up the anti-labour attack on workers and their rights, in order to protect the profits of the business groups in the event of a new capitalist economic crisis and an intensification of the imperialist war with the people as victims. They are preparing themselves by intensifying repression against workers' struggles, increasing the degree of exploitation and curtailing workers' rights.

The adoption of EU directives and the decisions taken by governments in national parliaments affect the entire life of a working family: from the morning when the workers get up to go to work to the evening when they return, from their salary to their working hours, from health and safety in the workplace to pensions after the end of working life, from industrial relations to obstacles in collective action.

The propaganda of the governments in every Member State, whether neo-liberal, social democratic governments or governments of parties that make up the Party of the European Left, are steadily trying to convince the people that the EU is a guardian of labour rights, that its ‘European acquis’ and its ‘best practices’ help to protect workers' rights.

They are trying to prettify the EU in the eyes of the workers, but it is the EU that bears the main responsibility for the anti-labour reversals in all Member States.

Flexicurity, i.e. flexibility without real security, as a basic EU employment strategy, which we have experienced for 20 years, combined with mobility and flexible working time, is being enriched by the proliferation of new forms of flexible working relations.

The fundamental orientation towards an adaptation of labour relations to the needs of employers, for cheaper labour, remains steady. This orientation is specified in a number of anti-labour directives, which also lay down measures to multiply the profits of the business groups.

The effects of the strategy of dismantling labour relations have been directly experienced in all EU countries, where flexible forms of employment have been showing a particular upward trend in recent years, not counting various new forms that are part of the so-called labour market based on the white contracts that are being promoted (mini jobs, one-day contracts, zero hours contracts).

Therefore, for the political culprit, we need look no further than the EU and the national governments that turn its directives into laws.

It is the EU that is pushing for the increase of flexible working time and attack on the 8-hour working day, a political direction that all governments in all countries support and implement.

For example: EU directives are the laws that allow workers to work for more than one employer, i.e. 13 hours of work per day, with the only restriction being the minimum daily rest period, i.e. 11 hours of rest for the employee between the end of one shift until the start of the next!

It is by using this legislative arsenal that, during the previous capitalist crisis, the road was paved for the abolition of collective bargaining in the majority of EU Member States, which stipulates that the minimum wage should be based on indicators of national economic and social conditions and should not affect the profitability and competitiveness of business groups.

Another recent example is platform workers. Despite the fact that their struggles have pushed the EU and many Member States to recognize them as real workers, at the same time the EU and governments allow employers to suck them dry with endless hours of work, using various algorithms and without providing them with means of protection for their health and safety.

Through EU directives embodying the strategy of big capital, they have eroded public social security systems, they are expanding private insurance and supporting the notorious ‘active ageing’, i.e. working until the age of 74 and 75.

Recent EU directives on the strategy of so-called legal immigration are the ones that ensure the exploitation of cheap labour force, with the transnational agreements between EU countries and countries in Asia and Africa. For the EU, migrants are welcome when they serve as cheap labour, but unwanted when they claim work with rights and a better life.

In order to pass all of the above without resistance and to hinder militant demands across the EU, governments are making reactionary changes to the laws on the functioning of trade unions, attacking on collective living processes and bringing obstacles to the right to strike. Recent examples in our country include the 2018 law of the SYRIZA government that undermined the right to strike. This law acted as a springboard for the ND government to bring in a new law in 2021 that criminalizes trade union action, puts additional obstacles to the organization of strikes and promotes digital profiling of trade unions.

The EU, the governments and the big business groups have a valuable partner in this, namely the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and many large General Confederations in the member states, such as in our country the GSEE and ADEDY. These Confederations provide support to the anti-labour policy, promoting the line of social partnership and class reconciliation.  

In the face of all this and under the weight of the bad situation facing the peoples of Europe, major national and sectoral strike mobilizations have been organized over the last three years.

The period of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown after decades who the real producers of wealth are, the enormous contribution of the workers in health, transport, energy, supermarkets, in contrast to the parasitic capitalists who have accumulated huge profits trading the peoples’ life and health.

The imperialist war, energy poverty, rampant inflation across Europe, stagnant wages, the attack on our social and insurance rights were the final straw.

Workers in many European countries, on the initiative of first level and second level trade union organizations, have organized the most massive strikes in 30 years! In France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, in almost all countries, in strategic sectors such as energy, transport, industry, health and education.

Of particular importance were the anti-war strikes of dockers and seamen to prevent the loading of war material destined for the war fronts in Ukraine and the Middle East, such as the one that took place in the port of Genoa. But also the huge demonstrations against the genocide being carried out in Palestine by the murderous state of Israel.

Similarly mass were the recent demonstrations of the farmers, including in our country.

All these hopeful struggles show that the people have not said their last word yet. The strength of the workers lies in organization and struggle. And based on this strength they can assert their rights.

It is a basic task of the CPs to actively engage in the struggles of the working class, to strive to have communist workers leading the unions and the struggle. To graft the demands of the workers with the contemporary needs of the working people and not the needs of the business groups. This is the way to strengthen the confrontation with the capitalists and the bourgeois state, with the EU itself. To strengthen the anti-capitalist line of struggle and to change the correlation of forces within the trade unions, the federations, the Labour Centres.

This is confirmed by the experience of the KKE's action in the trade union movement in recent years.

The period of the pandemic in Greece showed that the organized people have the power to break the prohibitions and restrictions on the activity of the KKE and the trade unions. PAME's strike rally on May Day 2020 and the breaking of the curfew on the anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising by the Party and the trade unions —two mobilizations that had international resonance— demonstrated precisely this power.

Drawing on the experience of the struggles of the previous period, the capitalist crisis of 2009–2015, and incorporating the experience of the struggles during the pandemic, new important steps were taken in the KKE's intervention in the organization of workers' struggles in the past four years, a period of capitalist growth for capital in Greece.

Under conditions of capitalist growth, wages for workers remain stuck at the 2009 level; the prices of basic foodstuffs, fuel, energy, rents have doubled; the purchasing power is behind even that of 2000. War spending for NATO and the EU, for Greece's involvement in imperialist wars is multiplying at a time when the educational and healthcare systems are collapsing.

Under these conditions, the KKE has revealed the real causes that aggravate poverty and exploitation. It has shown the perspective against the real culprits, the system of the capitalists and their state; it has been at the forefront of organizing the struggle of the working class and the popular strata in a planned way.

Based on this direction, we elaborate the frameworks of trade union demands for each major front of struggle, in a away that the concrete demands fuel the organization and  militant uprising of the workers despite the overall retreat.

Thus we have opened the big fronts of fixed daily working time, 7-hour working day 5 days a week, as a mature demand based on the development of science and technology, against flexible forms of employment, against 12-hour and 13-hour working days. We open the big front of Collective Labour Agreements and wage increases. The prevention of accidents at work, health and safety measures in the workplace. The big issue of defending exclusively public and universal social security. The strengthening of the public healthcare and educational system. The people's housing front, against foreclosure auctions and evictions. The defence of working class trade union rights and right to strike, which is being criminalized. The organization and protection of the rights of women, immigrants, the youth.

Dozens of local, regional, sectoral and nationwide mobilizations were organized on the initiative of first-level and second-level trade union organizations, responding to the call of the All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME). In other words, PAME is the rallying of Federations, Labour Centres, Unions and Struggle Committees in workplaces that work with a class orientation in the trade union movement and which are led by communists and other vanguard militants who may not agree with us on everything but are concerned, fighting and looking for a militant way out of the problems.

On the occasion of the tragic train accident on the now privatized railway network that claimed the lives of 57 of our fellow human beings, two and a half million people and youth in Greece took to the streets. The most massive mobilizations of recent years were organized.

Against the attempt made by the parties of the plutocracy (ND, PASOK, SYRIZA, the fascists) to cover up the crime as well as the responsibilities of the EU and themselves,  who have ruled all these years. The slogan that dominated the sea of people that flooded the big cities of our country was 'their profits or our lives'. This slogan has been heard before during the pandemic. The CP, the action of the communists within the trade unions and student associations had a very important contribution.

On 28 February, a few weeks ago, a new national strike shook our country with the same slogan  their profits or our lives". This is because a year has passed since the railway crime and the culprits still remain unpunished. But also because this slogan unifies all aspects of the life of the working class that are sacrificed for the profits of the monopolies, such as wages and income, health, education, housing, social security.

In this mobilization, workers who fought for collective agreements and wage increases, farmers who fought for decent prices for their agricultural products against the EU’s CAP, students who fought for contemporary, exclusively public and free education met on the streets of struggle. The coordination of the struggle and its expression in a nationwide front against the government and the EU was achieved through the active work of communists in the trade unions and the mass organizations of farmers and students.

We cannot but underline that all these nationwide mobilizations took place despite the strike-breaking stance of the GSEE and the open confrontation of the trade unions with the leadership of the trade union movement. In the last year alone there have been 3 national strikes without the decision of the GSEE, while the one to take place on 17 April will being held without the participation of the ADEDY. The leaderships in the third-level trade unions in the private and public sectors are the biggest supporters of the governments and the EU.

The mobilizations are organized from the bottom up, by federations and Labour centres, by hundreds of first-level unions. It is characteristic that 38 Labour Centres and 22 Federations took part in the last national strike, of which not even half are rallied in PAME. Among them are the largest organizations in the country such as the Labour Centres of Athens, Thessaloniki, Piraeus, Patras and Larissa and the Federations of Bank Employees, Energy, Chemical Industry, Builders, Food - Beverage, Transport.

This militant coordination, the indignation and outrage of the working people in the workplaces and in society, through the organized intervention of the communists in the trade unions, is also reflected in the change in the correlation of forces. In more and more first-level unions, but also in second-level union organizations, the workers trust those who boldly resist the anti-labour and anti-popular plans; those who put the contemporary needs of the workers, the people and the youth in the forefront and lead the struggles in every factory, enterprise, university and neighbourhood. The promotion of more and more communist militant workers in the leaderships of the trade union organizations will help to multiply the seedbeds of struggle, to unite and strengthen the sea of militants in the future, to strengthen the current disputing the EU and the policies of the bourgeois governments. For this current to be transformed, through the intervention of the KKE and the massing of its lines with new militants from the working class, into a current of overthrowing capitalist barbarity.