Greece: Angry Workers, Youth Strike vs. Bosses’ Crisis Cuts

ATHENS, GREECE, February 26 — More than 20,000 workers marched to this city’s center as part of the second 24-hour general strike in two weeks, closing airports, public transportation and schools. Cops fired tear gas at youth throwing stones and paint near the Parliament buildings. Workers carried banners declaring, “Tax the Rich” and “Hands off our pension funds.”

Workers are protesting the rulers’ austerity program demanded by the World Bank which will force the working class to pay the price for the crisis capitalism has created. European Union bosses are pushing the program to deal with a potential default of a national debt of $400 billion. The situation is similar to that which caused the U.S. banking crisis, and involves some of the very same U.S. banks

The bosses’ government has imposed a wage freeze and bonus cuts, and is expected to raise the value-added-tax by two percentage points, raise fuel prices and abolish a month’s additional pay received by public- and private-sector workers.

“What else are they gong to cut,” said Kiki Oikonomou, employed at a state school for disabled children, “the air we breathe? This is like a jail sentence.” (NY Times, 2/25)

“If people see the minority living a good life and their wages plummeting, they’re going to take to the streets,” predicted Haralambos Dramantis, employed by the state power board. “We haven’t seen the big uprising yet but it will come.”

These 24-hour strikes reflect the anger and militancy of the working class, but they can only produce a real “big uprising” — revolution — if workers trace the cause of the bosses’ crisis to capitalism itself. And that can only happen if communists are present and lead the working class in that direction. Unfortunately, that kind of leadership is lacking currently in Greece.