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    Vol.61/No.8           February 24, 1997 
 
 
Greece: Teachers, Sailors, Working Farmers Rebel  

BY GEORGES MEHRABIAN AND BOBBIS MISAILIDES
ATHENS, Greece - For an entire month thousands of public employees and other workers have participated in strikes and almost daily rallies and demonstrations at the center of Athens, the capital of Greece. February 9 also marked the 14th day of nationwide farm protests.

Workers and farmers are resisting draconian austerity measures that the capitalist government of the social democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), headed by Prime Minister Constantínos Simítis, is trying to impose through the 1997 budget. The measures include cuts in social services, a wage freeze, and cuts in hiring throughout the public sector.

In the face of the government's unyielding stance, high school teachers decided on February 5 to continue indefinitely their nationwide strike. The walkout entered its fourth week. Two days earlier, teachers at elementary schools joined the strike, shutting classrooms across the country. Nearly 75 percent of teachers across the country are now on strike.

The teachers are demanding increases in the monthly salary of new hires, ranging from 50,000 to 75,000 drs (260 drachmas = US$1), and pay raises according to seniority. The strikers are also demanding jobs for the thousands of unemployed teachers, lowering the number of students to 25 per class room, and raising national spending for public education to 15 percent of the national budget.

The strike was called by the Federation of Elementary School Teachers (ELME) and the Federation of Secondary School Teachers (OLME). It has the active support of the Panhellenic Union of Unemployed Teachers (PEAE).

On February 5 teachers participated in one of their biggest demonstrations in the last 15 years. They were joined by many of their students who marched in solidarity. The protesters marched to the prime minister's office to present their demands.

Hundreds of cops attacked the demonstrators and arrested two of the striking unionists. Among the most popular slogans protesters chanted was, "No more mockery! The strike can't be broken with 15,000 drs." The teachers were referring to the last offer for a salary raise by the government, which would mean a substantial decline in real wages due to high inflation.

The 11-day seamen's strike
Three weeks earlier, thousands of merchant marine sailors participated in their longest strike in decades. The militant walkout started January 12 and lasted 11 days. Sailors managed to hold ships tied up in Pireaus, Patra, and other major ports across the country by organizing sit- ins inside the vessels. The Panhellenic Seamen's Federation (PNO), which called the strike, has 30,000 members.

Central to the sailors' demands were social security pensions equivalent to 80 percent of wages and demands for tax breaks.

The Greek merchant marine fleet is among the largest in the world with 3,246 vessels. Of them, only 1,766 fly the Greek flag. Many of the workers are from the Philippines, Pakistan, and other countries. These workers have the worst jobs, are paid lower wages, and don't receive health or other benefits. The PNO leadership has done nothing to organize the immigrant seamen or fight for any of the rights of the foreign-born workers. Instead, it blames them for the mass layoffs by the ship owners and over the years has fought to protect "Greek jobs." This demand of the PNO leadership undercut labor solidarity during the strike.

As in other strikes and protests, the government responded by using its arsenal of antilabor laws and a massive police force to break the strike. About 3,000 cops surrounded the port of Pireaus on the night of January 20. Pireaus is the largest port of Greece and was the center of the nationwide strike. While the cops were assaulting the workers, Minister of Merchant Marine Stávros Soumákis ordered the sailors to end their strike in two hours.

The sailors stood firm waging pitched battles with the cops. By 3:00 a.m. the next day they successfully repelled the police efforts to break their walkout. The ship owners cut off electricity and food served to the strikers on many boats. The employers also took the sailors' union to the court. On January 22, the court declared the strike illegal and announced that if the walkout continued 14 PNO leaders would face fines and jail sentences.

Under these pressures, a majority of the PNO Executive Committee decided to accept the government's last offer. The vote was 9-6 in favor of ending the strike. During the debate in the PNO executive, around 300 sailors gathered outside the union headquarters and chanted slogans supporting the continuation of the strike. They reflected the determination of many seamen.

The government agreed to collaborate with the ship owners and the PNO leadership in the hiring process to "protect Greek jobs." For this year, pensions will be paid at 58 percent of wages, and sailors will also receive tax breaks of 4-6 percent.

Working farmers battle the police
In the middle of this labor unrest, Thessaly cotton farmers relaunched their mass mobilizations for two weeks. Convoys of thousands of tractors began moving toward different points of the main north-south national highway February 4. Their stated aim was to shut down traffic between Athens and the northern city of Thessaloníki, the country's second largest city. In December, the farmers closed the country's major highways with roadblocks for 25 days. They took down their blockades prior to the Christmas holidays and gave the government a notice that they would be back.

The farmers are demanding higher prices for their products to cover costs and guarantee them a living income; a three-year moratorium on interest payments on their debts, and decrease in the interest rates for new loans; cuts in fuel and power costs for cultivation; lower value added taxes (VAT); and compensation of up to 90,000 drs per strema (1/4 acres) of land to cover damages to their crops.

A public prosecutor issued a ban at the beginning of February on the "concerted movement of agricultural vehicles on the national road," thus in one stroke of the pen making the protest movement's tactic illegal and giving the government the legal cover to assault the mobilizations.

The PASOK regime mobilized 6,000 cops to prevent the farmers from carrying out their protests. According to the February 5 Athens News, a cat and mouse game ensued for hours between the organized farm movement and the vast police forces. "Farmers used CB radios and dummy convoys to keep the pursuing police on their toes. At one point tractors turned the tables and blocked a police van convoy from reaching one intersection.

"By nightfall some 2,000 tractors lined up at Drougos, a village south of Larissa, on the old national road. The Thessaly farmers appeared determined to set up their base there, setting up tarpaulin shacks, lighting fires and breaking out the tsípouro, the local spirit, to face the cold outside."

Ethniko's Kírix (National Tribune), a Greek-language conservative daily published in New York, described in detail some of the battles these farmers waged with the police on their way. The 2,000 tractors were preceded by 500 private cars. "When they reached the village of New Monastíri," the paper said in its February 7 issue, "they met a police roadblock. Seeing the tractors, the police tried to place three police cars across the highway to prevent the farmers from going through.

"The farm convoy stopped 50 meters in front of the police cars and dozens of farmers got out of their tractors and cars. They threw themselves on the police vehicles, literally lifting them in the air, with the police officers inside, and placing them on the side of the road. In a climate of general enthusiasm, the tractors went through and continued on their way to Fársala."

Over the next days the farmers' "guerrilla" actions continued as tractors crossed fields and rivers to out maneuver the vast police force arrayed against them. Repeated short closures of the road continued into the weekend.

On February 7, thousands of police, surrounded 1,500 tractors the farmers had left on the Athens-Thessaloníki national highway and, in the presence of public prosecutors, deflated all the tires and arrested the small farmers guard present.

The government then announced it may confiscate all vehicles involved in these actions. Most farmers had left for nearby villages the night before due to exceptionally bitter cold. Two days later the farmers discovered that many of their tractor tires were not just deflated, but slashed, lights and windows were broken, and some engines were damaged by mixing sugar with fuel. Farm leaders said those affected will file suits for compensation by the government. Nine government ministers were dispatched to the countryside in a government propaganda campaign to slander and demobilize the movement.

Government wages war on farmers
Despite all the threats by the government, the farm movement in Thessaly was gaining steam in the days leading up to the latest flare-up. During a visit to the region on February 1, Militant reporters witnessed 40 to 50 tractors assembling at each of the villages in the Thessaly plains that we traveled through.

The well organized and determined farmers succeeded in cutting the national highway at three locations for one hour each and then retreated. Farm leader Yiatutis Patakis is quoted in the February 5 Athens News stating, "We are in control - we can block the roads any time we want."

The government took a tough line refusing to negotiate on any of the farmers' demands unless they suspended their street protests. The Simítis administration has used extensive red baiting in an attempt to cut across sympathy for the farmers' plight.

The January 27 daily Nea reported that Agriculture Minister Stéfanos Tzoumákas stated that the protesting farmers are being manipulated by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the opposition conservative party New Democracy.

Tzoumákas told the January 28 Athens News, "What we are saying is that the time has come to do what needs to be done to make Greek agriculture viable. Some, mainly the KKE, say there is a directive from the European Union to reduce the agricultural population of our country. But everyone from Marx to Friedman will tell you that agricultural production can not survive with plots of land less than 10 stremas [2.5 acres]. Do you know how many such farms we have in Greece? Four hundred thousand."

The government has made clear that it intends to use its policies, and the normal workings of capitalism - debt slavery and the gap between prices and cost of production most working farmers face - to drive tens of thousands of small farmers off the land.

In a visit to the agricultural town of Kardítsa in the cotton region of Thessaly, this point became clear to Militant reporters. The towns people milling in the streets and cafes, or strolling the squares and alleys, were in their big majority middle aged or older people or children. Few young adults could be seen anywhere, as many have had to leave for jobs in the big urban centers such as Athens.

The outcome of the struggle is not determined yet, however. On February 7, about 2,000 construction workers marched toward the Greek parliament in the center of Athens in solidarity with the farmers. They clashed with the police who prevented them from approaching parliament. Striking teachers, construction workers, small businessmen and others joined more than 6,000 farmers at a rally in the central square of Microthebes, Thessaly, February 9. There, farm leaders announced they were suspending their strike and attempted roadblocks to see if the government would negotiate with them. They set early March as the deadline for reinitiation of the struggle if talks fail.  
 
 
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