When I wake up in the morning, I light a cigarette, I drink a cup of coffee.
Before that I’ll wash myself…
My colleagues are usually here and we chat
Then the night will come again, I'll go inside the tent to sleep, then wake up
and do the same things once again.
I don’t like it but it’s imperative that we resist.
Because the company asked us to commit suicide.
We won’t commit suicide. We'd rather have the company kill us.
Me, I come and sleep over here since the second day of my layoff.
I placed this tent here and said that I’ll sleep here until they take me back.
Days of Strike
A month before the first layoffs, among which there’s mine too,
the company announced that, starting November 1st,
either we accept a 5hrs work shift, 5 days a week or they’ll fire 180 people.
273 people unanimously decided not to accept this measure
and, if Mr. Manesis would proceed in the layoffs, we’d get in the streets for action.
Nikolaos Manesis is the owner of Halyvourgia Ellados steel industry.
The reason he invoked for the changes in the working status quo were
the financial crisis and the company’s losses during the past two years.
We told him that production has gone up by 70.000 tons from 2009 to 2011
which means that we have intensified our work and we can’t know if there is any crisis.
There is a lot of production indeed. A day before the factory closed
there were departments which were working for 14 and 16 hours to produce iron.
We haven’t taken our holidays because of the intense production. There was no time.
Don’t listen to them when they say that there is no production.
The projects are about to start, Mr. Manesis himself told us.
Halyvourgia Ellados has two factories, in Aspropyrgos and in Volos.
The Volos trade union immediately accepted the company’s demands.
In Aspropyrgos the workers denied and, initially, 24 people were fired.
The workers decided to strike indefinitely. By early December the layoffs rose to 50.
The mobilization continued.
Honestly, I’ve never participated in a demonstration before.
The people there were great. From wherever we’d pass they’d tell us:
“Have courage! Hang on! Stay put! You are the bastion against the storm that is coming
to affect the amount of working hours”.
This strike has a special characteristic that older labor struggles had too.
These struggles had a sense of heroism, a strong solidarity between the workers
and a militancy which gives the impression that they can reach the extremes,
that they won’t abate.
And together with issues of salaries and working conditions, there is also a strong sense of dignity.
We are not heroes, we were not born as heroes.
We are not heroes, as the people say.
What we don’t negotiate is what our “predecessor workers”, so to say, have inherited to us.
There was a lot of blood spilled for the 8 hours day and the 5 days working week.
These can’t be undone by us.
If these measures pass from the steel worker, what will the employers say to a shop employee?
Will they earn the same? The employer will say “the guys who manufacture the iron earn 700 euros.
How much can you demand for simply carrying it?”
Mr. Manesis is probably something like a forerunner for the rest of the industrialists.
Something like the beginning for what is going to happen in the rest of the country.
And this is more obvious when you see the solidarity we get from people who come
and brings food, money, cigarettes, they come and show their support with deeds.
And everyone says “Stay put and we’ll support you”.
It’s unethical not to fight. It’s unethical.
Today, while a charity gala can be covered by three cameras and can occupy
a 5 or 10 minutes news item on TV, this strike did not have the tv and radio coverage
in proportion to its importance.
Of course the media have played a very crucial role for what we are living.
They tried hard to impose this situation onto large social groups as an inevitable one.
Additionally, they tried hard to collectively inculpate the society.
A basic tactic to do this, in order to achieve the goal of manipulating the collective conscience,
is the concealment or the falsification of events.
Who else has ever done a strike for 32 days in Greece?
Noone has ever done it. 32 consecutive days of strike?
There is so many people coming here for solidarity and there is not a single TV station.
In the labor struggles they usually prefer the tactic of concealment.
For example, during these two years since the EU/IMF Memorandum there were many labor struggles,
however few of them reached the main news bulletins.
The same thing happens in the case of the steel workers. When their story was first shown on TV,
they were already one month into the strike. And that was on a Saturday…
One other Saturday...
-What do you know about Halyvourgiki?
-Me, nothing. -Blackout? Noone? Nothing?
-They are on strike. They are on strike for several days now.
-Great! Can you inform me as well so that I understand what happened?
-They are on strike for several days. What do you want?
It was a random moment when I felt awkward and wanted to change the subject and
since I know the guys, I tried to bring into the discussion an issue which
I would indeed be very interested to discuss. Since I knew it was not well known,
I wanted to discuss it because I think people would be interested to hear about it.
From their reaction, I understood that there was some kind of embarrassment.
We can’t hope that every day this story is top news in the channels which we know
more or less how they function.
I mean, to make it into the new bulletins, a news story must first not touch on the channel’s interests
and second it must be catchy.
Now, I can’t know what sort of interests there are so that this news story is not
top news continuously. For sure it’s probably not very nice for the industrialists
or those who have certain interests, to see a strike as a top news story.
I’m here in downtown Athens for the third week.
We have started a solidarity action for the steel workers at Halyvourgia Ellados.
We collect signatures and money for the strikers and
we also hand out a proclamation of support to their struggle.
We believe that this strike is about all Greeks because the whole of Greek people
today is experiencing an attack from the capital and the state.
For us it’s common sense that the Greek people should support this strike as if it was its own strike.
Because we all are or will be tomorrow in the place where the strikers at Halyvourgia are today.
We are here in order to express our solidarity to the strikers at Halyvourgia Ellados.
The strikers are fighting so that their salary is not reduced to 500 euros and
so that the 50 layoffs are annulled. Their strike concerns all of us.
No one can survive alone in the savage attack from the capital and the state.
We support the strike by signing the text of solidarity. May the strikers at Halyvourgia Ellados win.
If it passes from us, they will trample on you.
We can’t take it any more. It’s either us or them.
Everyone who believes in our struggle is welcome.
But those who truly believe it, in one single struggle.