Thousands of workers with yesterday’s 24-hour strike in Piraeus sent a strong message of the militant uprising and escalation with the National General strike on November 9.
Coordinated and rallied in their trade unions, dockers, ship workers, shipyard workers, metalworkers, “froze” on October 25 the largest port of Greece for 24 hours. One of Europe’s largest ports went silent by the workers’ strike.
Since dawn the workers were fighting the battle of the strike with determination. They made it their own success by crushing any attempt at strike-breaking by the employers.
At their side were workers from other sectors, youth, women, pensioners, expressing their practical solidarity, with the most characteristic images being recorded at the passenger port, where they had taken their positions in front of the catapults along with the striking seamen, even before dawn.
Akis Antoniou, President of the Piraeus Branch of the Attica Metal and Shipbuilding Industry Union of Greece, referred to the alarm bells ringing in the Shipbuilding Zone for a great danger from the continuous labour “accidents”.
“We do not accept that in order for PPA, COSCO, shipowners to make record profits, we will not know when we leave our families for our daily bread whether we will return home. The immediate health and safety measures at work are our first priority,” he pointed out and highlighted the union’s demands for protection measures at workplaces, strengthening of control mechanisms and implementation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement for all workers, the operation of a Health Centre with specialties related to the work in the Zone, a Fire Station and rescue teams, as, as he noted, it took 4 hours to extricate a metalworkers who was working at 14 metres high and fell into the tanker hold and is still hospitalized. “If he was bleeding he would have died. But even now, because of the hematomas on his head, we don’t know how he will be when he comes out of the hospital,” he noted and stressed: “We are continuing. We are next to each other and on November 9 on the strike we will have to flood Piraeus in the strike rally.”
