European workers protest the financial crisis

In October, workers in Europe started taking their anger over the attacks on their living standards, brought on by the current economic crisis, into the streets.

Workers in Belgium went out in early October in a nationally coordinated series of actions to demand the government curb rising prices. Almost all transportation was shut down, but the bosses were able to keep Antwerp, Europe’s busiest port, limping along.

More than two million Italians marched in Rome Oct. 25 to demand that Premier Silvio Berlusconi stop smashing and slashing Italy’s education system.

Berlusconi is a billionaire and controls much of Italy’s media. “Even if we are one million people protesting today, Berlusconi will say there was only one hundred of us. And he will be able to do that because he controls so much of the media,” protester Livio Giorgi told Agence France-Presse. (Oct. 25)

Maria Turri carried a placard saying: “Hello children ... Your mother is protesting for you!” She told AFP: “My children have no guarantees for the future. We do not want a U.S.-style society where we cannot afford the schools. The government must invest more money into state schools instead of giving it to the banks.”

Four days earlier, on Oct. 21, workers in Greece’s two largest union confederations shut down the country with a 24-hour general strike, under banners that read “We don’t want to pay for their crisis” and “High prices, poverty, unemployment, we have had enough.” (www.7sur7.be) In some Greek workplaces, over 90 percent of the workers were on strike.

The two major Greek labor confederations, the General Confederation of Labor (GSEE) with 2 million members and the Federation of Public Employees (ADEDY) with 500,000 members, want a complete change in the government’s economic policy. They want to repudiate its program of privatizations, salary austerity, fiscal restraint and the reform of retirements.

Protests and strikes took place all over Greece, including two marches in Athens and a series of sharp confrontations with the cops involving Molotov cocktails and tear gas.

The ferries that provide service from the mainland to the Greek islands remained in port. Banks, schools, post offices and courts were closed and hospitals functioned with an emergency staff. Trains didn’t run. Mass transit in Athens was also out, except for the service needed to get protesters to and from the demonstrations. Airline flights were canceled either because their Greek flight crews refused to fly or, for international flights, because air traffic controllers were on strike. Lawyers and civil engineers also joined the strike. Journalists walked, which meant there was no media coverage of the strike.

Kyriaki Tassioula, a 45-year-old waiter, said: “We are protesting because they are not listening to us. ... The government guarantees the banks but it cut my pension.” (Al Jazeera, Oct. 21)

Speaking in Athens, GSEE General Secretary Kostas Poupakis demanded that employers in Greece start increasing salaries considerably. He pointed out that people living below the poverty line, 5,000 euros a year (today worth about $7,500), needed urgent assistance. Government figures show that 20 percent of Greece lives on 5,000 euros or less.

Kostas Panantoniou, ADEDY’s vice president, said, “This strike is only the beginning. We won’t be the victims again. Enough! This policy will be overturned.” (Al Jazeera, Oct. 21)