Κείμενα στα Αγγλικά [ENGLISH]

The factory of Vio.Me (Industrial Mineral) starts production under workers’ control!

"We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread, we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.
We are the ones who have nothing and we are coming to take the world "
Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)
In the heart of the crisis, the workers of Vio.Me. are aiming for the heart of exploitation and property.

With unemployment climbing to 30%, workers’ income reaching zero, sick and tired of big words, promises and more taxes, unpaid since May 2011 and currently withholding their labour, with the factory abandoned by the employers, the workers of Vio.Me. by decision of the general assembly of the union declare their determination not to fall prey to a condition of perpetual unemployment, but instead to  struggle to take the factory in their own hands and to operate it themselves. Through a formal proposal dating from October 2012 they have been claiming the establishment of a workers' cooperative under full workers’ control, demanding legal recognition for their own workers’ cooperative, as well as for all the others to follow. At the same time they have been demanding the money required to put the factory in operation, money that in any case belongs to them, as they are the ones who produce the wealth of society. The plan that was drawn up met with the indifference of the state and the various trade union bureaucracies. But it was received with great enthusiasm by the world of the movements, which, through the creation of the Open Initiative of Solidarity in Thessaloniki and afterwards with similar initiatives in many other cities, have been struggling for the past 6 months to spread the message of Vio.Me across society.

Now it's time for worker´s control of Vio.Me.!
The workers cannot wait any longer for the bankrupt state to fulfil its gratuitous  promises of support (even the 1000-euro emergency aid promised by the Ministry of Labour was never approved by the Minister of  Finance). It's time to see the Vio.Me. factory –as well as any other factory that is closing down, going bankrupt or laying off its workers- reopened but its workers, and not by its old or new bosses. The struggle should not be limited to Vio.Me., in order for it to be victorious it should  be generalized and spread to all the factories and businesses that are closing down, because only through a network of self-managed factories will Vio.Me be able to survive and light the way towards a different organisation of production and the economy, with no exploitation, inequality or hierarchy.

When factories are closing down one after another, the number of unemployed is approaching 2 million and the vast majority of the population is condemned to poverty and misery by the governing coalition of PASOK-ND-KPS, which continues the policies of the preceding governments, the demand to operate the  factories under workers’ control is the only reasonable response to the disaster that we experience every day, the only answer to unemployment; for that reason, the struggle of Vio.Me. is everyone’s struggle.  

We urge all workers, the unemployed and all those who are affected by the crisis to stand by the workers of Vio.Me and support them in their effort to put in practice the belief that workers can make it without bosses! We call them to participate in a nationwide Struggle and Solidarity Caravan culminating in three days of struggle in Thessaloniki. To participate in the struggle and organize their own fights within their working places, with direct democratic procedures, without bureaucrats. To participate in a general political strike in order to oust those who destroy our lives!

 

In order to establish worker’s control over factories and the whole of production and to organize the economy and society that we desire, a society without bosses!

It's Vio.Me.’s time. Let's get to work!
Paving the way for workers’ self-management everywhere!
Paving the way for a society without bosses!

 

Open Initiative of Solidarity and Support

to the struggle of the workers of Vio.Me. 

BIO.ME: Law is the worker’s right and not the law of the bourgeoisie

An interview with Makis Anagnostou, president of the Viomihaniki Metalleytiki’s workers’ union (BIO.ME), to the paper Nea Prooptiki

The struggle of BIO.ME is undoubtedly one of the most important labour struggles that have been taking place this period of time in Greece. The factory (Viomihaniki Metalleytiki) has been deserted by its owners and its workers –not paid since May 2011– deny to come to terms with the idea of unemployment and struggle for the transfer of production into their own hands, thus raising in essence the point of workers’ self management as a response to the closures and the layoffs of the bankrupt capitalist Greece.

The president of the workers’ union of BIO.ME, Makis Anagnostou spoke with the Nea Prooptiki:

-N.P. At what stage is your struggle today?

-M.A. Since the last interview we have given, there are many things that have changed. There have now been taken decisions that were not part of our struggle in the preceding period. Up until a certain point in time we kept following the path of lawfulness and nothing else, but we found out that this path is a too long one. For this reason, the assembly decided that another path is to be followed, a still legitimate one, but this time based on the logic that law is the worker’s right and not the law of the bourgeoisie.

-N.P. You remain unpaid since May 2011, while September was also the last month you were entitled to the welfare allowance that you were getting from the Organization for the Employment of the Labour Force. How do you survive under such conditions?

-M.A. We barely survive, if we can call it survival at all. The truth is that the Ministry showed some interest in certain cases facing extreme difficulty, but actually this help has the form of charity and does not offer solutions  to the real problem; that of unemployment. It is work that we want and not charity.

-N.P. I would like you to tell us something about the peoples’ response to your struggle and the solidarity that you have been getting.

-M.A. There is help from all over Greece but also from abroad. Of course, those who support us are mostly poor people themselves. They are neither big publishers, nor big companies. They are ordinary folk people, workers, some working and probably most of them unemployed nowadays, who support us, however, from the very little they go by. Some bring us a pack of spaghetti, others a small bag of dried beans, or some others by giving us a 2 € financial assistance. But even this small help is very important to us as it offers us strength and courage to go on.

-N.P. There is a part of the “left” which has accused you that with your effort to take over the control of the factory you are trying to become yourselves small capitalists. How do you answer them?

-M.A. To them, we have answered already. When the labour movement is at our side, it is difficult for struggles like ours to depart from their goal. But when the movement takes a distance, then the workers (as workers) are trying to find ways to survive and there lies the danger of a bourgeois turn of the whole issue.

-N.P. In the recent strikes you chose a distinct stance in relation to not only the General Confederation of Greek Workers (ΓΣΕΕ) but also to the Agonistic Front of All Workers (Π.Α.ΜΕ.) and to the Coordinative organ of Primary Unions. What was it that led you to that decision?

-M.A. All these are decisions made by the general assembly. What I mean is that who we would stand next to was not proposed by the union’s administration –though, in essence, we do not function as an administration–, but there is always a concern about this issue; it is always discussed in the general assembly and it is the general assembly that reaches a decision. The general assembly takes this stance because of certain things noticed by it, which I would not like to criticize right now.

-N.P. You do not want to tell us what were the actual things noticed by the workers?

-M.A. When the union started functioning, we used to go to the Workers’ Centre. There we saw that their attitude was not what we had expected. In other words, and as only an example, in our participating in the discussion of strike movements, there were various persons telling us that we should appeal to our bosses to bring back their capital. We did not agree. We wanted a more class defined way and we went to the Agonistic Front of All Workers (Π.Α.ΜΕ.) In this case, however, we reached a point of being the only primary unit holding the banner together with the Π.Α.ΜΕ., and the Π.Α.ΜΕ. pretended not to see us because it did not agree with us on certain issues. It is true that the Π.Α.ΜΕ. has clearly a class character, but could someone say that we, as a primary union, we do not? The fact that we did not agree with the Π.Α.ΜΕ. on partial issues does not make us adversaries. So, to be sure, because we do not agree with them on everything and do not blindly follow their advice, the Π.Α.ΜΕ. attitude towards us is perhaps not the expected one by the general assembly and that is what led us to our decisions.

-N.P. Is this to say that you somehow found them against you?

-M.A. We can’t say we found them against us, but we certainly did not find them to our side. This is the bad thing. And I must say that in many events that took place to our support in different cities, there were many individual members of the Π.Α.ΜΕ that expressed a positive opinion about our struggle and about our way of raising our points!

-N.P. In October there took place a large solidarity caravan that started from Thessaloniki and through Larissa and Volos was finally completed in Athens. How would you characterize this experience?

-M.A. I will tell you what my colleagues said rather than characterizing it myself. Many colleagues who –up to that point in time– were skeptical and did not know if they wanted to join the caravan or not, after the completion of the caravan event clearly stated that if it was to take place again, starting even the next day, they would join again.

-N.P. Have you had any kind of reaction during this whole period by the owners of the factory?

-M.A. Up until this present moment, they keep a passive attitude. We are sure, however, that they are making some movements in order to re-enter the game. What will play an important role in such a case will be our own determination and how powerful we are.

-N.P. Some would make the observation that in the recent period there has been some ebb in the struggle of BIO.ME. What do you have in mind to do in the coming days in order to rekindle your struggle?

-M.A. I wouldn’t say ebb. Of course there has been a certain slackening during the holidays, but sometimes when you are to start a footrace you must first spurt in order to manage to give more thrust. This is what we think is happening because many things will be running in the near future. It is the meeting at the Ministry, some more general meetings in Athens focusing on how we can trade some products, we have a court of sessions against our ex-employers on the Jan. 24, and after all this, something new starts on Feb. 8 in order to give birth to something else. The beginning will be the concert we are preparing for the day I mentioned, with the participation of well known artists such as Thanassis Papakonstantinou, Charoulis, the Chainides and others. And on Jan. 11 there will be a development in order for the operation of the factory to start.

-N.P. What exactly do you have in mind to do during these 3 specific days?

-M.A. There will take place a reverse caravan. This time, that is, it is not us that travel to other cities but we invite people from other cities to come to Thessaloniki and support a new effort that starts on Feb. 8. We do not know when exactly we will have the pick of this effort, but as we said it starts on Feb. 8, with a protest march and a concert, and the rest will take place at the factory. The exact way of how we are going to go on in the factory is something that we will announce in the near future.

-N.P. Will this be also determined by the meetings you are going to have in Athens? That is, if your discussions with the Ministry end successfully, is there a case to operate the factory yourselves?

-M.A. This is what we are trying to do, with a very specific manner. Now, if some things change in the course of the effort and the Ministry actually gives some solution, it will be good. We threw the ball to the Ministry and said that the way in which the factory will work is now the ministry’s responsibility. Either with the legal, or, rather, with the “according to the letter of law” way or with what we are saying, that law is the worker’s right and we can rightfully take the factory in our own hands.

-N.P. If you do get the factory in your hands and operate it, how do you believe you will manage to keep it alive and healthy under the pressure of the economic crisis? Do you have some plan about it? 

-M.A. Yes, there is a plan. There is a big difference between what we contend and what there exist out there. We maintain that even in this diminished and decayed market, an opening, on our part, to different types of stores and commercial shops and to other countries will give us the potential to keep the factory in the present phase that we are going through difficult times. To hold out, that is, and then to work in another way.

-N.P. The struggle of BIO.ME has been characterized by many as a pioneering one, for the Greek reality at least, as it shows the way that should be also followed by other factories that are in the same position. Has there been until now any response by workers of other factories who experience the same situation?

-M.A. I wouldn’t say pioneering. Our demand has for ever been the primordial demand of working people. What the working person, and more so the industrial worker, looked forward to was to take the means of production in their hands in order to be able to produce for themselves. This issue is one we put to all working people, but the bourgeois class does for years and years now is to keep the working class into hypnosis so that it cannot be able to think in this way. For this reason, it directs the struggles to more “quiescent” and bourgeois preferred solutions. I have to repeat it; we took the examples of the past and we believe that with the setup we have planned and the charter that we will draw we will become able to keep a very good level of cooperativity, because all this is essentially going to become a workers’ cooperative that will go beyond the bourgeois type of solutions.

Vagios Tzachristas

http://nprooptiki.blogspot.gr/

via ergatis.wordpress.com
Source: http://kokkinostupos.blogspot.gr

Solidarity to workers of Viom. Metal. from Copenhagen

November 8th, 2012 | Add a Comment

On Saterday 3/11/2012 a solidarity event was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the financial support of the VIOMET factory workers. The purpose of the event was to demonstrate the support and solidarity to the workers that fight for the self-management of the factory.

The event was organized by the political group Crisis Mirror. Crisis Mirror is based and operates in Copenhagen for about a year now, and it consists of people (workers, students) of many nationalities whose common ideological background is the fight against capitalism (www.crisismirror.info).

Many people responded to this call for support and a significant amount of money was collected – which will be sent immediately – as a means to strengthen the fight of the VIOMET workers. A document with relevant information was also distributed.

Before the party the film entitled ”The Take” (http://www.thetake.org/) was screened, followed by an interesting discussion about this particular type of fight (self-organized factory management).

In the era of capitalist brutality workers must oppose their most important weapon: solidarity.

CONVOY OF STRUGGLE AND SOLIDARITY

FOR THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKERS OF “VIOMICHANIKI METALLEUTIKI”

THEY CAN'T? WE CAN!

«It is we who knead and don't have bread, we who dig out the coal and freeze.

It is we who have nothing and are coming to take the world»

Tasos Livaditis

The workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” are struggling to take the factory

from capital's grasp and into their own hands.

As they are unpaid since May 2011 and under suspension of works, the allowance of which ended in September, with great difficulty of survival they struggle to operate the factory again, which the employers has abandoned. The workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki, subsidiary of Philkeram-Johnson, denounce the management of the company for its choices, which led the factory to ceasing works and degenaration, as well as its mockery about the owed accruals. Of course, the choices and the behaviour of the employers is far from random. The crisis in the construction industry, result of the general capitalist crisis, has condemned thousands of workers of the sector, as well as those of the industries directly related to it, to unemployment. The workers of “Vio.Me.” claim to reopen the factory, creating a workers' cooperative under their full control, demanding furthermore legal recognition for both their venture, as also for any and all that will follow. Simultaneously they claim the necessary funds to get the factory running, funds that belong to them anyway, as they are those that produce the wealth. The struggle of the workers of “Vio.Me.” is important not only for the workers of the construction industry, but for all the workers, who daily experience thousands of dismissals and flexible, unpaid and uninsured labour. It is important not only because it calls openly into question the parasitic role of the employers in general, but also because in a society that is destroyed every day by the capitalist crisis it offers the workers the only realistic way out of unemployment and the closing of businesses, while at the same time showing the only way to realise it – the way of struggle, the way of total rupture from the world of the bosses, the way of taking over the means of production by the workers themselves.

But if we want the hope of victory for the struggle of the workers of “Vio.Me.” to be real, and to open the way for a general questioning of the productive and political model of capitalism, then the universal support and active solidarity from all the workers and unemployed of the country is necessary. The struggle of one union is not enough to save society from capitalism's bonds and to destroy its crisis, it is necessary that the union's struggle becomes the struggle of the whole workers' class. A nation-wide movement of support and solidarity is needed, that, with “Vio.Me.” as example, will struggle that the factories and the businesses pass over into the workers' hands, who with direct-democratic base unions will decide by and for themselves, without “outsourcing” to no one their struggles for social liberation.

Now that the unemployed near 2 million, now that the businesses close one after another, now that the state organises continuous tax-attacks against the workers; now is the time to make the struggle for occupation and self-management of all the means of production the struggle of every union, every worker and every unemployed. We call onto every fighting class-union, every unemployed and worker, to support and show solidarity to the struggle of “Vio.Me.”, to fight with us, beginning with participation at the CONVOY OF STRUGGLE AND SOLIDARITY, participating in the diverse actions all over Greece and its nationwide conclusion with a demonstration in Athens at 15/10.

Wholly supporting the proposal of the workers we fight with them for:

The factories in the hands of the workers. Self-management in all workplaces. All means of production should pass into the hands of those who produce the wealth of society. From factories to department stores to land and field, the workers with self-management as their weapon must take over the productive process, manage it by themselves and direct it to benefit the whole society. The struggle of “Vio.Me.” can show actually that the workers can and will exist without bosses.

The struggle in the hands of the workers. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to create and support workers' class base unions, like that of “Vio.Me.”, that will have as their only decisive body the general assembly, which will take militant decisions with direct democracy, far from any form of “outsourcing” and bureaucracy.

Let this struggle become the struggle of us all with a nation-wide general all-workers permanent strike, to overthrow the social medieval conditions of poverty and pauperisation that the local and international capital builds around our lives. Let every business and every factory strike. With a permanent strike, so that the workers' class itself realises its huge power and sweeps away memoranda, measures, troikas, governments and bosses.

The workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” can't change the world by themselves,

but nothing can change if the workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” stay alone.

This struggle is a struggle of all the workers and unemployed.

It is a struggle of us all! We will overcome!

Open Solidarity Initiative

for support of the struggle of the workers of “Vio.Me.”

e-mail: protbiometal@gmail.com. Blog of the Union: http://biom-metal.blogspot.gr

THE FACTORIES BELONG TO THE WORKERS

It is already the 17th month that the factory “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” (subsidiary of Philkeram-Johnson) in Thessaloniki, Greece, remains shut. The workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” are in an important struggle, fighting under difficult conditions, unpaid from May 2011 and existing under suspension of works with great difficulty of survival, to keep a very dynamic industry of construction materials alive, and the workers with dignity and pride against unemployment, poverty and pauperisation.

The workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” are struggling to take the factory from capital's grasp and give it into the hands of the workers!

They struggle to materialise that we the workers can live without bosses!

By their side are hundreds of workers and unemployed, either organised in collectivities or not, who support the struggle of the union of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” politically, economically and morally, by organising initiatives, conferences and solidarity events in many cities across Greece, and also abroad.

In a period where the majority of society is under attack, sacrifice to profit and the rescue of the “national economy” of the banks and industrialists, the example of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki”, that is given by a union that functions with processes of direct democracy, is moving and inspiring to more people by the minute. This is because the struggle of the workers for self-management of the factory, for complete workers' control over the means of production and living, finds increasingly more supporters in a conjuncture where the companies that go out of business and massive unemployment are daily news in every corner of Greece.

THIS IS WHY THE STRUGGLE OF “VIOMICHANIKI METALLEUTIKI” MUST BECOME THE STRUGGLE OF ALL THE WORKERS, OF WHOLE THE ATTACKED SOCIETY.

The part of the Open Solidarity Initiative is to reinforce the struggle of the union of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki”, by strengthening the informative and solidarity campaign, making sure that the calling of the workers reaches every workplace and every neighbourhood. For this we organise campaigns together with the union from the Industrial Zone to the centre of Thessaloniki.

LET'S SET OUT ON THE ROAD OF STRUGGLE

In the era of one-way capitalism and the continuous attack by the government and the troika, who threaten to crush the needs and rights of millions of workers and unemployed, we set forth on the modern just social struggles, making one more step to our -so necessary today- counter-attack to overthrow capitalism.

We strengthen the voice of the workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki” who call out:

YOU CAN'T? WE CAN!!!

Open Solidarity Initiative

for support of the struggle of the workers of “Viomichaniki Metalleutiki”

e-mail: protbiometal@gmail.com, union's website: http://biom-metal.blogspot.gr/