Its president launched an attack on the government over labor issues SYRIZA Alexis Tsipras in his greeting at the concert organized by SYRIZA PS and SYRIZA Youth in honor of Labor Day, at the Polichoro Fertilizers in Drapezon.

Alexis Tsipras said that the government is “obsessed with extreme neo-liberal ideas and considers inequality a natural phenomenon”, saying that a century ago the demands of labor struggle and conquest were: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of leisure. He argued that “today we are in the ‘normal’: unpaid twelve-hour days, menial uninsured work, wages to live on for half a month for a family and the other half for thawing and growing crops.”

The President of SYRIZA PS urged the workers to go to the polls en masse, “to vote for the 250,000 seasonal workers who will be on the islands, and the Mitsotaki government took care not to give them the opportunity to vote, because they knew that if they voted, that their will be blackmailed.”

“Let’s answer to restore normal work: an eight-hour shift, a collective labor agreement. In order for the employer to have an obligation to declare and pay for overtime work. So that he does not shoot unreasonably. Eliminate temporary workers, precarious work. So that the state is next to the employee when the law is not respected, with a strong SEPE”

He pointed out that beginning with Chicago in 1886, May Day “marks the march of the working class, wage labor, won a place in the sun, marks the difficult struggle of millions of people for social justice.”

“The murder of Paraskevades at the May Day celebrations of 1924, met with bayonets. The murder of Tusis and 11 others in Thessaloniki on the bloody May Day 1936, which inspires Yannis Ritsos for his Epitaph. 200 executed at Caesariana. And others who fought and made sacrifices during the years of division, when words like democracy, social justice, socialism and even trade unionism brought persecution, exile and imprisonment, and sometimes even death. This is our story.”

Mr. Tsipras observed that these conquests remain “tragically relevant” today and that “it is not enough to advance the conquests with struggle and sacrifice”, but “with the struggle one must be able to hold these conquests”.

Source: RES-IPE