On Sunday, trade unionists of GENOP-DEI, the union of the Public Power Corporation, occupied the building issuing the electricity disconnection orders for households that have failed to pay their bills. As of a few weeks ago, the latest bills now include the latest property tax imposed by the government, typically including hundreds of euros per property, making payment for thousands a non-option. The statement by GENOP-DEI follows.
Workers,
from the first day when the Papandreou government announced that it would turn DEI [the Public Power Corporation] from a servant of the people into a tax collector, that it would use the public good of Electricity as a blackmailing leverage against the poor and the unemployed, we used the most clear terms to denounce this unacceptable decision. With an emergency press conference on September 16th, 2011 we showed the tragic consequences this measure would have not only upon society but also upon DEI itself.
Because for us, the role of the trade unionist cannot be detached from what happens in society.
Because for us syndicalism is a holy cause, we made clear from the first instance that we will use all our powers and with the greek society as ally and forefront to block this unacceptable and criminal decision.
More specifically, at this press conference we had said that in our struggle we would intervene at three stages in order to cancel out this unacceptable decision.
The first stage: to block the bills with the emergency tax from being posted out.
The second stage: in the case that we did not succeed at the first stage, to block all the disconnection orders from reaching all those who cannot afford to pay the emergency tax.
The third and main stage would be that with our bodies, our physical presence, giving a man-to-man struggle in the streets and in the neighbourhood of the entire country we will prevent the electricity from being disconnected from the households of impoverished co-humans of ours.
Concerning the last point, we can today announce that in tens of cities across the country, patrolling groups [have been set up] in co-ordination with labour centres, unions, the local municipalities, social organisations, citizen unions, and wherever they do not exist yet, this is only a matter of days.
Being consistent with what we had said, on October 13 we attempted to block the posting out of the electricity bills. At that time, the management found alternative solutions.
Today, November 20th and despite the ferocious attack we received from the lackeys of the system, one day before the disconnection orders are mailed out, we are are here, at the only point where disconnection orders are mailed out, to the entire country.
We are here because the role of DEI is not that of the tax-collector.
We are here because the public good of electricity cannot be used as a blackmailing leverage.
We are here because those who voted in this despicable law did not even bother to think “but how will the unemployed possibly pay? Will we also cut off their electricity?”
We are here because we refuse to become inhuman murderers of small children and of the sick
We are here because for us no co-human of ours is in abundance
We are here because there is still blood running through our veins
We are here, because humans and their needs are above the markers
We are here to blockade the disconnection orders for the public good of Electricity, without which lives are endangered and no-one can live.
Finally, we are here because we do not want to be ashamed tomorrow.
We will not throw our pride and dignity down the drain.
21 Comments
What I’d like to is how supportive the workers in the electricity industry are? It seems to me overwhelmingly good news so I find myself distrustful of it.
GENOP is the only trade union in DEI. They are one of the largest, and most powerful unions in the country.
For years they were avid PASOK backers. For them to issue a statement in this tone is absolutely, brilliantly unprecedented!
Really? So how long you are going to live like that? Working short hours, not paying your taxes and expecting us to bail you out?
No sympathy for you at all. It is time to pay up. Your laziness is haunting you down
Yes your quite right Dutch Guy. The situation is unstable once the workers start to exercise any sort of direct counter power. But fortunately the elimination of the other powers(those acting as agents of Capitalism) will restore stability.
Dutch Guy, as an American I’m laughing right now. You Dutch get everything for free, free healthcare free this, free that. None of you pays for your education and half of you stay in school until you are 30. ****, I was at a Columbia Law School class and there was some Dutch guy there who was 31 and already graduated from a Dutch law school!
The point is, I could say the same thing about you lazy Dutch. You work less hours on average than the Greeks according to the OECD and you get tons of free benefits.
So shut your yap you lazy *******.
Oh for jesus’ prolapsed ********! If I had a dollar for every ****ing nationalist **** on this blog arguing the toss between which nation spends more on its fixed capital (roads, schools, healthcare, welfare infrastructure) or how it subsidised (note the past tense) its ‘lazy’ variable capital (read workers)in a western world that has exhausted all capitalist options barring dictatorship and/or war, -I’d be a ****ing millionaire…
STICK YOUR WORK-ETHIC UP YOUR ****!
Should the trade unionists of GENOP-DEI, now in occupation, be threatened with eviction they should make plans to destroy the computers and equipment used to print the thieves tax/electricity bills at the Public Power Corporation building.
Resist today or live like dogs tomorrow!
SOLIDARITY.
Don’t go to work, stay at Home and read a book:
Paul Lafargue, 1883: Das Recht auf Faulheit.
(The Right on Laziness.)
ah… and in the afternoon train on weapons, we need more insurrectionists.
Yesterday night there was the information that the prosecutor would ask the police to “end the occupation violently”. This has not happened till now. The GENOP union has shut down the “hermes” system of DEI, which means that no transaction of DEI with the public is possible. Also the site of DEI is down, due to this. (www.dei.gr)
GENERAL STRIKE announced by GSEE: THURSDAY 1st DECEMBER
You have to pay health-care in Europe
Yeah, barely. Everything is heavily subsidized to the point that it’s practically free. And on top of that, all of you get free handouts for your education. What a bunch of bums! Stop taking from people and WORK, stop looking for handouts, especially you Dutch.
Hey JR, why do show off your heavy neurosis and your ignorance about european social systems. What do you talk about, the dutch social system or the german, which is very different? You have no idea what you are talking about. We don’t get free handouts for education, even in Germany we now have to pay for most of the universities. But education in europe still seems to be better than in the USA. Your ignorance seems to be the proof. So shut up, go to work don’t get us bored with your bourgeois comments.
The Greek people have been sacrificed on the alter of financial greed and direct action by the ordinary people is the only road left open to then if they are to retain any degree of dignity. I particularly admire the last section of their statement, it glows with humanity, something that capital lacks.
JR – you’re not just encouraging others to submit to the intensified misery of wage slavery, you’re defending your own intensified misery. Unless of course you’re like the JR from the TV series Dallas – a bourgeois direcly living off the exploitation and misery of others slaving for you.
Everywhere in Greece the “Can’t pay” movement is defending electricity boxes from disconnection, but the JRs of this world have long been totally disconnected from the electrifying effect of social war against this sick work-enslaved society.
In a world of seven billion people all that we use is dependent on the activities of billions of others. Linked through a world wide division of Labour. This led Marx to categorise the existence of the individual , in this world with a complex division of labour, as one of ‘All sided dependence’. I assumed JR was indulging in a joke. There can be no real independence for us as members of the human race. Some autonomy but no independence.
Haha, I’m just trolling Dutch Guy. It’s true that Americans in general work harder than Europeans but only because Americans by into some faux mythology or don’t have a choice. The data supports this in general.
My point was that if you’re a German or Dutch person who is complaining about the Greeks or Italians being lazy, then there’s always someone else who can accuse you of being the same in a very troll-like manner. And ****, the Koreans, Japanese and especially Chinese, all work harder in general than Americans. So Americans talking about this WORK for a living nonsense can always look East to find someone who is working themselves to the bone.
In America, some of the benefits bestowed on Euros are hard to believe, like German vacation time, benefits, free education, etc. But I’m really just jealous to be honest.
Dear insurgents,
In a free state every person who posesses a free will, has to manage one’s self-control. Legislature would then laid down at the people. But seeing that something like this is in large states an impossibility, and even in small states many difficulties are met, the people has to appoint representatives who must do all the people itself can not.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws 1748)
police attacks the occupation of DEI. Now, 6 syndicalists are detained, between them the leader of the union. Riot police guard the entrance of the occupied building, while the workers still have it under control.
Hope you know that close to 50% of the people in Germany are -as working poor- without vacation time and/or don’t have money for vacation. The funny thing is that most of these normally don’t hate the “lazy Greeks” but lots of the others who have (paid) vacation time do.
Like in Greece there were so many small “self-employed” businesses that had to close down. But unlike Greece there it happened because of new laws forcing everyone to pay health care insurance – and for a self-employed it’s double cuz normally the boss pays half.
So for them it makes sense to get welfare which pays insurance and lots of them have to expect/hope also to get a minimum pension by welfare.
In Greece there is no welfare…
@Montesquieu
It’s a good thing, that you’re dead already.
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