Appearing on NET* channel yesterday morning, the deputy minister of Education and Culture, K. Tzavaras, went on an anti-labor rant about what is going on in Halyvourgia**. Without a sign of basic respect for workers who have been defending their rights and the dignity of the entire working class for the last nine months, the minister stated the following:
“It is a matter of protecting the free will of the worker (…) For the same reasons that the right to strike has to be protected – and the right to strike is a right that is deployed under certain legal conditions – in the same sense the state has to protect the right of someone who wants to work (…) The use of the Riot Police is an issue decided upon by the one who has the monopoly of state violence (…) We have to understand the state as a guardian of rights; when there is social resistance , the law has to be applied. And sometimes the means of enforcing the law include the Riot Police (…) Order in the operation of a productive unit (i.e. in Halyvourgia) where a number of people had to work was threatened (…) No one has the right to occupy a business because the benefit of the worker coincides with a certain boundary, which is keeping the business in operation. When a business is closed work automatically stops (…) Seeking to destroy a business and the businessman is destructive behaviour. This is not syndicalism, this is barbarity; against this barbarity every democratic state has to take action (…)”!
* New Greek TV – A state-owned TV station
** “Elliniki Halyvourgia”, translated as “Greek Steelworks”
The Radical, 25 July 2012
… And the distortion of reality
Slander, along with the conscious distortion of reality, are fundamental attributes of the political personnel of the bosses. That's why there is no reason to tell the minister that the right to strike has been secured with the blood of the workers. The right to work is questioned every day by the government, which supports any available Manesis* in firing workers by the hundreds, violently extracting millions from those placed outside production as a result of the permanent attempt of the capital to dump the burdens of its crisis on those that it exploits. Nor is there reason to remind the minister that the state is not “neutral” but serves the class which is in power, in this case the bourgeoisie. Doesn't the minister know that one of the workers' demands was the right to work of those Manesis fired? Because, if anything, it is shamelessness for the minister to say what he says for the right to work accusing the steelworkers that they deny it; to who, indeed? To themselves?
There is no reason to answer because the minister knows all of that. And we are not noting these facts because we were surprised by his fury against the workers. We didn't expect anything else. We note them to tell the employees in the Ministry of Culture that the government doesn't see only the Steelworkers this way, but every human being engaged in struggle. So they can know that the only answer to the crushing down of their life is class solidarity and unity--an organised popular counter-attack.
*Manesis is the owner of “Elliniki Halyvourgia” (Greek Steelworks)
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