Greek workers continue to move left

Submitted by martin on 21 May, 2013 - 11:40

Sofia Theodoropoulou, an Athens activist of the revolutionary socialist organisation Okde, spoke to AWL members at the Lutte Ouvriere fete near Paris on 18-20 May.

The last elections in Greece, in May and June 2012, showed a big movement to the left in the country. That was expressed in much bigger votes for the left. That shift to the left is still in progress.

Over the months since then we have not seen so many one-day or two-day general strikes, or demonstrations, but we have seen long-running sectoral strikes, weeks or months long, in steel [31 October 2011 to 26 July 2012], in the Athens metro [16-25 January 2013], and among the municipal workers [late 2012 and early 2013]. There has been a very big percentage of popular support for the strike, despite the denunciations of the government and the media.

The shift to the left has also been expressed in the unions. In April there were elections for the national leadership of the GSEE (the private-sector union confederation). For the first time since the end of the military dictatorship in Greece, in 1974, the left won a majority. By "left", I mean Syriza and KKE and some of the far left, not Pasok.

The vote for the Pasok tendency in GSEE collapsed, and the supporters of New Democracy also lost votes. The left vote was over 35%.

However, the left has not strengthened itself as much as that in the base-level unions. [In Greece, a "union" is a workplace, or company, or trade organisation, usually relatively small. Then there are "second-level" unions, local or trade federations of base-level unions; and, at the third level, two confederations, GSEE for the private sector and ADEDY for the public sector].

The increase of the number of left activists in the base-level unions has not been so big. There has been an increase in the number of Syriza activists, but only a small one.

Next week there are elections for the second-level union organisation in Athens. I would say that Pasok will definitely lose ground. I would guess that Syriza will show increased support, but the far left may show a smaller share of the vote, partly because there have been big job cuts in the workplaces where Antarsya [a coalition of some left groups] is strong, and partly because some support has shifted from Antarsya to Syriza. In these Athens election, Okde will be running our own list, called "Workers' Fightback", for the first time.

Elections for the second-level union organisation in Thessaloniki took place in late 2012. The Pasok-supporting tendency declined. Syriza ran a joint list with some ex-Pasok people, and gained ground. The far left gained some representation, including three representatives from Okde. Pasok retained the presidency of the second-level union organisation because KKE withdrew their own candidate and abstained in the vote.

The most important thing has been the long-term strikes, even though they have been only sectoral.

Last July I told you about the coordination of left-wing base-level unions in Athens. There has not been much progress on that. The coordination still does not meet on a regular basis, but convenes only to support particular struggles. Some new efforts were made to support the municipal workers and the metro workers.

The metro workers' union leadership, which is close to Antarsya, called for an open meeting of unions across the city. But the call was not successful. Disgreements on details of approach slowed it down so that there was not enough time to build a committee before the strike ended.

Some ultra-leftists, anarchists and others, are calling for unions to get out of GSEE and ADEDY and build new second and third level unions. We believe that is wrong. We say workers should build new first level unions - especially in the private sector, where 90% of workers have no union, or a union that exists only on paper - and fight within GSEE and ADEDY. Trade-union unity is an important strength for the Greek working class.

Some new first-level unions are being built, but at the same time job cuts and closures are weakening or destroying unions, so on balance the organisational basis of the working class is weaker than it was.

The coalition government led by New Democracy [Tory] leader Antonis Samaras is still in office - mainly due to a huge mobilisation of the army. When workers go into struggle in Greece now, they face not only the police, but also the army.

Greece has a part-conscript army [all men have to serve nine months in the armed forces after reaching 18], but as yet we are very far from building organised left influence in the army ranks. That is because the left is not strong enough in Greece generally.

We believe there is value in intervention in the ranks of the army; but as yet we are far from that. Our priority now is self-defence of the workers' movement.

Golden Dawn has increased its profile, but not grown as an organised force. They have not organised a social basis, or strong organisations in neighbourhoods. The state helps create racist and fascist incidents by ghettoising migrants and poor people into certain neighbourhoods, but you can't say that there are fascist neighbourhoods. Whenever the working class starts to mobilise seriously, Golden Dawn disappears.

The government and the right-wing media criticise Golden Dawn, but they also publicise and boost Golden Dawn by way of criticising it.

In July Syriza will hold a congress and the new party will be formed [in place of the old coalition structure of Syriza]. Probably minority tendencies will be banned within the new party. I don't know whether it will be a strict ban or a loose ban which allows left minority tendencies like DEA and Kokkino in fact still to operate, but I don't think that is important because Syriza is moving more and more to the right.

The Syriza leaders have dropped a lot of the things they stood for before the May and June 2012 elections. They no longer say they will cancel the EU/ ECB/ IMF Memorandum, but that they will renegotiate it. They no longer say that they will refuse payment on Greece's debt, but that they will delay it. More and more the Syriza leaders focus on the prospect of getting a left government at the expense of mass struggles.

And the leaders command a majority inside Syriza of over 60%.

The organised base of Syriza has grown relatively little, although its poll scores remain high. The mass of workers will vote for Syriza even though they do not trust the Syriza leaders.

The policy of the KKE [the diehard-Stalinist Greek Communist Party] is more and more crazy. It is losing members, even leading members, and support in the trade unions. Most of the members who leave KKE go to Syriza, and some to the far left, for example to NAR [the largest group in the Antarsya coalition].

Antarsya is losing ground to Syriza. The far left groups outside Antarsya - Okde, EEK, KKE-ML - are gaining increased support.

The neighbourhood assemblies have continued to decline. Some remain, but only a few. The centre of activity has been the long-term strikes. There could have been a new long-term strike, by the teachers, just recently, and that could have produced a rebirth of the movement.

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