Wahoo! And don't forget their labor-federation stooges:
The historic central offices of the General Confederation of Greek Workers in Athens have been occupied by militant workers
The action forms part of a strategy to counteract the designs of the union bureaucracy to distance its membership from the current revolt, and protest its management and mediation of workers' struggles in Greece. The occupants aim to create a space in which to facilitate a grassroots and self organised workers response to the crisis, and bring the wider working class into the events unfolding on the streets of Greece. Town halls in Athens and Thessaloniki have also been occupied in order to hold general assemblies.
The communique of the "General Assembly of Insurgent Workers" follows below:
DECLARATION
We will either determine our history ourselves or let it be determined without us
We, manual workers, employees, jobless, temporary workers, local or migrants, are not passive tv-viewers. Since the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night we participate in the demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the occupations of the centre or the neighborhoods. Time and again we had to leave work and our daily obligations to take the streets with the students, the university students and the other proletarians in struggle.
WE DECIDED TO OCCUPY THE BUILDING OF GSEE
-To turn it into a space of free expression and a meeting point of workers.
-To disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes, and that the rage of these days was an affair of some 500 "mask-bearers", "hooligans" or some other fairy tale, while on the tv-screens the workers were presented as victims of the clash, while the capitalist crisis in Greece and Worldwide leads to countless layoffs that the media and their managers deal as a "natural phenomenon".
-To flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection -and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union mechanism that supports it for decades and decades, undermine the struggles, bargain our labor power for crumblings, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite telling: GSEE cancelled the programmed strikers' demonstration, stopping short at the organization of a brief gathering in Syntagma Sq., making simultaneously sure that the people will be dispersed in a hurry from the Square, fearing that they might get infected by the virus of insurrection.
-To open up this space for the first time -as a continuation of the social opening created by the insurrection itself-, a space that has been built by our contributions, a space from which we were excluded. For all these years we trusted our fate on saviours of every kind, and we end up losing our dignity. As workers we have to start assuming our responsibilities, and to stop assigning our hopes to wise leaders or "able" representatives. We have to acquire a voice of our own, to meet up, to talk, to decide, and to act. Against the generalized attack we endure. The creation of collective "grassroot" resistances is the only way.
-To propagate the idea of self-organization and solidarity in working places, struggle committees and collective grassroot procedures, abolishing the bureaucrat trade unionists.
All these years we gulp the misery, the pandering, the violence in work. We became accustomed to counting the crippled and our dead - the so-called "labor accidents". We became accustomed to ingore the migrants -our class brothers- getting killed. We are tired living with the anxiety of securing a wage, revenue stamps, and a pension that now feels like a distant dream.
As we struggle not to abandon our life in the hands of the bosses and the trade union representatives, likewise we will not abandon no arrested insurgent in the hands of the state and the juridical mechanism.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE DETAINED NO CHARGE TO THE ARRESTED SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKERS GENERAL STRIKE
WORKERS' ASSEMBLY IN THE "LIBERATED" BUILDING OF GSEE Wendesday, 17 December 2008, 18:00
General Assembly of Insurgent Workers
A banner handing from the facade of the building reads:
>From labor "accidents"
to the murders in cold blood
State - Capital kill
No persecution Immediate release of the arrested
GENERAL STRIKE
Workers' self-organization will become the bosses' grave
General Assembly of Insurgent Workers
Communique #2 (17 December 2008)
An offhand answer to "mr." Panagopoulos regarding his statements on NET channel.
"Mister" Panagopoulos stated on the state channel (NET), that "some youngsters occupied the building of GSEE (...) if they were manual workers, they'd be on building sites now (...)". This unearthy subject, belonging to the managerial staff of National Bank of Greece,that "represents" the workers, where is he himself now, and what does he know about building sites?
He has been a technocrat for his entire life, a manager in State Companies (DEKO), a party wangler and a gravedigger of struggles. This spokesman of PASOK politics within the workers' movement lives in the northern suburbs, smokes cigars and gets a fat paycheck, from National Bank and GSEE, while administering huge state and europe-union funds.
He got promoted from his boss, while it is forbidden for trade unionists to get a promotion during their service time - and he accepted the promotion.
He organized a conference for the 90 years of GSEE in the amphitheater of National Bank, namely the amphitheater of his boss mr. Arapoglou, with funds of the Foreign Office, thus showing his intentions and his class position.
Panagopoulos can go join his bosses, just as he does every day. Just as he signs the collective agreement with the employers, giving us the lower wages in Europe.
How dare he reproach the insurgent workers, he who is the ringleader of repressing every labor demand?
Here in the occupied GSEE, there is plaque that commemorates each of its leaders. Above the name of Panagopoulos, there are many other names of bureaucrats who got the reward of becoming PMs: Kanellopoulos, Protopapas, Polizogopoulos. On this plaque there are also the names of the appointed (not elected) professional unionists during Junta and the Occupation. That's where Panagopoulos' name deserves to be.
He can abandon us where we've been since forever: at work, unemployed, in our class position, in our night shifts, on the streets, on the insurrection during daytime, on the street...
If Panagopoulos has worries about those who now are at work, let him stay calm. They will turn up for the evening assembly, that will open up the building he kept closed during all these years. They will not go to work tomorrow -the day he refused to call for a strike-, to hit the streets and express their rage.
A rage Panagopoulos can't and does not want to comprehend, because that's what his fat paycheck and his repressive role dictate...
Here we are...
Proletarian Initiative from (not that young) night workers of the liberated GSEE building
Communique #3 (17 December 2008)
An answer from the liberated building of GSEE
Panagopoulos declared this morning that we are not workers, since workers are at work. This, among many other things, reveals what Panagopoulos' "job" really is. Panagopoulos' "job" is to make sure that workers are at work, to do everything within his reach to secure that workers are at work.
But for the last ten days, workers are not only at work, they are out on the streets. And this is a fact that Panagopoulos and every Panagopoulos can't hide, even if he succeeds in hiding the sun that brings light to our steps and rage onto the streets of this city.
We are working people, we are jobless (paying in layoffs our participations in strikes called by GSEE, when they -the trade unionists- are rewarded with promotions), we are working under contract moving from job to job, we work insecured formally or informaly in "stage" progams or in subsidied jobs to lower the unemployment indices. We are part of this world and we are here. Whoever wants to understand can understand.
We are insurgent workers, end of story.
Every single one of our revenue stamps is paid with blood, sweat, violence, broken waists, broken hands, knees, feet, heads.
The entire world is made by us, the workers.
PS. We heard on the radio that our act was an artistic happening. We accept this characterization, but only as far as the proletariat will abolish art and philosophy (along with state and capital)...
two enraged proletarians from the liberated GSEE