At the last Board of Directors of the Kozani Labor Center, it was decided by the majority to declare an election conference on 30 May 2021.
Only from the decision to do it in a well-known entertainment center in the area do they show that they have lost all contact with the situation and the problems of the majority of the employees.
They are holding a conference while the extension given to the Boards of Directors of the unions to make appointments due to the pandemic has not expired. The issue is resolved by decision, the unions that have not been recruited all this time, to participate with the old representatives. Instead of giving the unions time to make their appointments in the next period and then proceed to a conference with new delegates, they rush to maintain the wrong correlation. (appeared 3000 voted on 3 months of union seals, the then president of the Labor Center, although an employee of PPC, was elected by a union of unemployed and employed, etc.). This will result in several cases from unions having representatives whose term will reach up to 7 years.
The reason they proceed this way, is none other than the fact that they want to prevent the retirements of the employees of PPC SA.. Those who retired in the previous period but also those from now on, in order to maintain privileges (trade union licenses, EC funding is based on the number of voters). The representatives from the unions of PPC SA constitute the 70% of the representatives in the conferences of EK Kozani.
They were not worried about the problems of the employees. From the first moment that the catastrophic plan of de-lignification was announced, they hurried to assist with their participation in the Regional Consultative Committee, in other words, they took on a role in gilding the pill to the employees. At the moment when the whole Working Class is boiling with the upheavals of the century with the abolition of the 8 o'clock, unpaid overtime , the obstacles to trade union action and the strike, etc., they tell us "to wait and see what the government brings" and that some agree, eg the electronic register to be filed in the country of employment. Their attitude is a continuation of the support of the profitability of the employers and was also expressed with the pandemic where they were useless when health , employees gave and are giving the battle of support of the Public Health System, were absent from the workplace when they became outbreaks of the virus instead of fighting for protection measures, pointing the finger at employees in the logic of individual responsibility, supporting employer and state.
But where they showed their truly anti-labor role was in the deadly employer crime at the Agios Dimitrios substation where, after a call from the class forces to meet the Board of the Labor Center, the Board of Spartacus, the SOP of Spartacus in Agios Dimitrios, disappeared. Their attitude towards employer crimes is stable as they call on employees to be careful and "observe the measures", blaming them.
These non-existent concerns, the problems and needs of employees, their struggles, came once again to support the government and the employers with the support of the GSEE line for the celebration of May 1, May 4 as a holiday at a time when hundreds of unions (ADEDY, Athens Labor Center etc.) organize a strike response at work 6 May by honoring the dead of our class with a strike, responding to the anti-labor attack of the state and employers.
For the class forces, the battle of the election congress of the Kozani Labor Center is a milestone in the titanic effort to reorganize the movement., It will be a continuation of the struggles we have waged all this time against de-lignification, the support of the Public Health System, the protection measures in the workplace etc.. We will use the time until the conference to inform the employees of the area about the meaning of the conference, for what labor movement workers need today.
Their profits – our dead
Everyone in the strike rally on Thursday 6 May on 10:30 in the Central Square of Kozani
