Von: „Labor Video Project“ <>
Selbstermächtigungsaktonen in Griechenland:
Greece: This TV station is occupied and changes programming to Workers News Channel
Datum: Dienstag, 03. April 2012 23:32
Newsflash: This TV station is occupied and changes programming to
Workers News Channel
Vassilis Dzimtsos, journalists’ union rep, AlterTV
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=28036
“We have been on strike now for four months and we have not been paid for nearly a year.
Some 650 people work here. It is the third biggest news channel, with rolling live coverage 24 hours a day.
After our first strike last May, the owner agreed to give us 2,000 euros each to return to work. Then in July our wages stopped again.
That is when the big strike began.
For the first month the station kept operating but with no live programmes. They were just showing movies and repeats.
Then we said to the owners that we would shut down the station completely so they could not collect money from the advertising.
We went into occupation to ensure that no news could be made here.
We started transmitting a workers’ news channel, giving other workers from different sectors the opportunity to come here and say what their strike is about. This made us very popular with workers from many different parts of Greece.
When we first started they cut the power to the building. But electricity workers came in and reconnected us.
Then in February, just three days before the government made their decision about the bailout, they cut our transmitter. That was because we were telling the truth about the strikes and what was happening on the streets.
Now we have an online video blog. We say the things that the other TV stations and newspapers will not say—the things that the government and bankers would rather people did not know about their system.”
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Issue: 2297 dated: 7 April 2012 Features
posted: 6.39pm Tue 3 Apr 2012
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=28037
A workers’ assembly at occupied newspaper Eleftherotypia. The passionate debate went on for over an hour (Pics: Guy Smallman)
Protesters close a motorway toll – to the delight of drivers
Striking health workers march through Athens
From protests to strikes to workers’ control, resistance to austerity has become part of day to day life in Greece – Socialist Worker
photojournalist Guy Smallman reports
Keeping workers fed at Greece’s occupied newspaper Eleftherotypia:
‘It’s solidarity coming out of necessity’
Moisis Litsis, Eleftherotypia journalist and workers’ committee member
“Eleftherotypia used to be the second biggest selling newspaper in all of Greece.
There are 800 of us now who have not been paid since August.
When we took the decision to publish a workers’ version of the newspaper, many of us successfully argued that it should be a full newspaper rather than just a pamphlet about our struggle.
This showed the bosses that we can make the paper without them.
The strike paper has helped us with everything from hardship money to a colleague whose wife was ill and needed medical treatment.
Money has been collected at football matches and by other workers’ groups, and also from the sales of the workers’ newspaper.
This has been turned into food and other supplies, which is being distributed by the union.
It’s a new kind of solidarity out of necessity.
Right now the management is waiting for a court decision. And the company is hoping there will be a new government and it will relax the labour laws.
There is a real fear among some of the journalists about changes to be made by the next government. For this reason, some have left to look for other work.
Recent figures are saying that over 400,000 Greeks are now in a situation like ours, where they are still officially employed but have been unpaid for a long time.
Our union is ensuring that at the very least these striking workers have enough food to eat.”
‚Give us the keys for the factory‘
Giorgios Sifonios, president of the Halivourgia steelworkers’ union
“Within ten minutes of the first workers here being laid off in October, everyone in the plant downed tools and walked out. Since then we have had 12 assemblies. We have been struggling for 145
days and we have had solidarity not just from workers in Greece but from across the world.
We have set up five committees to represent the needs of workers throughout the factory. We have committees for women steelworkers and for dealing with the media.
We have one for organising solidarity with other workers’ campaigns, like organising food parcels for example. And we have a committee for the 93 sacked workers.
The government threatened to close the factory permanently. Our response to the minister responsible was: give us the keys to the factory and we’ll run it ourselves. We will continue this strike until the very end.”
Saying no to highway robbery
Alanya is a non-party aligned protest group, born out of the Occupy movement.
It takes direct action against unjust taxes.
On this day they were closing a motorway toll, to the delight of passing drivers.
The government argues that the toll was introduced to pay for the road. But the roads were built years ago and have long been paid for.
‚We can run the hospitals‘
Chrisos Alguiris, junior doctor
“I am an anti-capitalist doctor. I want our health to be public and for everyone—for immigrants, for the poor, for everyone.
They say we have to pay for the crisis, we are saying it is their responsibility. We say get out of Greece—we will take your banks and your money and your hospitals and run them ourselves. We know how to run a hospital, the politicians don’t.
Each day we have an assembly with all the the hospital workers. We discuss the situation and we vote on how to continue.
We don’t organise each hospital by itself—we organise all together.
We need our unions to work for us. We talk to our leadership and the bureaucrats, we try to engage them in a constant political conversation.
But more importantly we organise with the rank and file. We decide what is best for each hospital, and then we inform the leadership of our decision.
The unions call the strikes, but we organise them.”