The Greek December 2008 Uprising and the Role of the New Trade Unions (2o) by Athanasios Tsakiris

15th Alternative Futures and Popular Protest Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
29-31 March 2010

The Greek December 2008 Uprising
and the Role of the New Trade Unions

Athanasios Tsakiris
PhD, Political Science
National and Kapodistrian

University of Athens

What happened in December 2008?

At this point a short account of the events of "December is needed. The 15 year old high school student Alexis Grigoropoulos was murdered by a special guard of the Police the night of December 6, 2008. In a few minutes, thousands of young people took to the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki,[1] clashed with the Order Restoration Squads (MAT) and attacked real targets that symbolize the dominance of the political-economic system they perceive as responsible for the ills of society. In the early hours of Sunday, tens of thousands of young men and women, and precariously employed workers and teaching staff at all levels took to the streets once more demonstrating and marching to the police departments in Athens and its suburbs as well as in many Greek cities and local law enforcement agencies. Very quickly the image of Alexis Grigoropoulos dominated the international news scene and an icon of all young rebels in Greece, Europe and North America. A new “cycle of protest” was opened and social movements have intensified their activities in the middle of the economic and social crisis. A “cycle of protest” gets stronger when the state responds to requests and demands of dissidents and groups with a contradictory policy mix of repression and procedural or partial retreat. Apparently in the case of "December" the government of New Democracy reacted pretty controversial. On the one hand the Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and members of his government expressed their deepest condolences to the parents of the victim and on the other they aimed at suppressing the "riots" that broke out in Athens due to the brutality of the police and the contradictory policy of the same government. For weeks the police made heavy use of tear gas, flash grenades and batons against both peaceful and angry protesters. The intensity of repression was such that provoked equivalent violence by anarchist demonstrators from the so-called “black block” who used tactics such as vandalizing public and corporate premises (especially banks and mobile-phone operators), causing disturbances and fighting melees with the police and para-state and fascist groups. The centers of Athens and of many Greek cities were turned into battlegrounds and many cars, shops and bank branches were delivered to flames. 
Cycles of contention are not results of social heavens. Nor should we deal with social conflict as if it is just another episode of an eternal conflict between “thieves and policemen” at the micro level.[2] Of course, this point must not be overlooked in the sense that the cycle of repression and conflict between the repressive mechanisms of the state and the “off limits” youth" (anarchists, autonomous communists etc.) lasts for three decades. Main events in this conflict were the cold-blooded execution of a 15 year-old high school student (Michalis Kaltezas) on the 12^th anniversary of the 1973 Polytechnic antidictatorship uprising in 1985 and the mass arrest of more than 500 demonstrators who had occupied the Polytechnic School in 1995 (when for the first time since 1973 the police violated the asylum of the university).[3] It is in the context of this conflict between repression apparatuses and an ever growing portion of youth who experiences the consequences of repression that we must seek for answers about the intensity of the conflict.[4] 

The financial crisis that still shocks the western capitalist world was then in progress. The neo-liberal Anglo-Saxon world as well as the Western societies with social democratic governments was supposed to provide some social guarantees to those who suffered the consequences of the dominant economic paradigm during the recent decades. A relatively small number of people around the capitalist corporations were in control of the whole economic life to their advantage, searching for the highest possible profit and returns on their funds. Associated initially with the names and the governments of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, for two decades neoliberalism has been the dominant politico-economic trend in the world and was adopted with variations by political parties of the right and center-left (and indirectly affected the post-communist parties that emerged in Eastern and Western Europe). [5] These parties and the policies they apply are the direct expression of the interests of extremely wealthy investors and of less than a few hundred firms. In contrast to these developments, workers and unemployed workers are experiencing the severe consequences of the crisis as hundreds of workers are laid-off and those remaining at work are forced to comply with the policies of employers to cut and remove their rights that have been gained after long and bloody struggles and often to be downgraded to part-time jobs. In December 2008 lay-offs increased by 17% while hirings were reduced by 12.9%. In 2008 10,103 jobs had been lost (4,023 more than in 2007) not counting those who were not included in the lists of the Organization for Labor Force Employment (OAED) because they were considered to be "self-employed" not entitled to unemployment benefits. Moreover, shops, small industrial enterprises were closing down every day and crafts activities were stopped. Their production was reduced and as a consequence workers were made redundant. Prices of goods and services were going up daily.[6] Pensioners saw their already inadequate pensions being cut or to be dissipated in no time. Farmers came out blocking the national highways every now and then often to claim the protection of their income from the effects of agricultural policies of the European Union and from the invasion of multinationals in the agriculture sector. Public education is underfunded since from its very beginning and the government through the Ministry of Education tried to impose indirect privatization of public universities and the upgrading of "colleges" in private universities and to integrate higher education under the terms of the Bologna agreement. The great social movement that had cancelled the amendment of the 16th Article of the Constitution changing the political climate was not forgotten but had not yet made Karamanlis and the ruling political group change their minds and strategies for the privatization of higher education. Moreover, public opinion had now become very suspicious towards the political decisions taken and instructions issued by the techno-bureaucracy of the EU in order to impose the neoliberal policies. The government and the EU had opened the way for privatization of everything from public utilities (energy, telecommunications, passenger air transport, postal services, etc.) and the deregulation of the financial sector for the sake of the higher social classes of money and capital. 

In addition, a series of economic and social processes was and still is in progress. First of all petit bourgeoisie social strata, especially in the cities, were indebted to banks (credit cards, mortgages and consumer loans) and similar financial institutions (e.g. debt collection firms). Households were caught in a process of bankruptcy whatever this means for social and political psychology. Falling farm incomes lead to a new domestic migration to cities, a move that was temporarily reinforced due to the forest fires of 2007 and 2008 in Peloponnese and other parts of the country where entire villages were burned down and those who survived tried their luck in big cities (Patras, Athens). The same social strata, especially the lower, face competition for badly paid jobs from crowds of immigrants who experience the racist policies and trends in the modern Greek state which only in name "welfare state" but in essence iti is a "residual" welfare state.[7] Industrial production decreased continuously and the consequence was that many workers were filling the ranks of laid-off or unemployed workers.[8] A part of those workers is trying to keep jobs in the tertiary sector, where employment relationships are flexible and uncertain and precarious employment is the rule in industries such as tourism, entertainment, catering. 

The people lose every day their faith in political parties considering either the government (mainly) or the major opposition responsible for the "malaise" of the country and their lives. Α first indication of the change that has occurred is the restructuring of the correlation of political party forces and the steady rise of PASOK (Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement) and its stay at the top of the polls. The survey "Political Conjuncture and Electoral Trends" conducted by the polling agency VPRC (Dec. 2008) records the following findings: PASOK 37.5%, New Democracy 31.0%, SYRIZA Coalition of the Radical Left) 12.0%, KKE (Communist Party of Greece) 8.5%, Ecologists-Greens 4, 5% , Other Parties 1.5%. It is apparent that the New Democracy government had been losing ground and that PASOK had been skyrocketed for the first time since the overthrow of its government and its heavy defeat in the elections of 2004. The striking feature of the period is that SYRIZA still occupies the third although this party actively participated in demonstrations and other radical forms of protest at the cost of being isolated both from the mainstream political parties and the “orthodox” Communist Party which despite its revolutionary rhetoric acted at that time as a “normal systemic party” denouncing SYRIZA activities as abetting anarchist and black-block hooded vandals and other “agents-provocateurs”. The Communist Party was self-restricted to narrow protest rallies and marches away from the bulk of protesting demonstrators. The second factor showing that the balance of power was changing and becoming increasingly difficult to return to earlier periods of dominance of the New Democracy party is the great increase of respondents who believe that "things in Greece are going to the wrong direction". In September 2008 this proportion had already increased to 76.8% since November 2007 and the proportion of the respondents who had the opposite opinion had fallen to 13.1% from 22.7%. Those in between responding "neither-nor" had been reduced to 8.7 from 10.9%. 

Workers do not trust anymore the old unions which they deemed bureaucratic, slow-moving and dominated by political parties, ready to compromise with governments and employers to ensure, among other things, the selfish interests of their leaders. Yet such unions in the scale of preferences stand above the parties as last shelters.[9] 
Last but not least, the ecological crisis (culminating in the fires that destroyed the nature, burned forests, dozens of people and villages) and the crisis of megacities provoked  large demonstrations in and outside of Athens and other cities. If to these we add the multiple mechanisms of repression and the unaccountability of private state apparatuses (with private TV the leading one) and the growing corruption in all sectors of society, we distinguish the explosive mixture that fire "social peace".

How do we assess the December 2008 events? What was the result? First of all, there was a proliferation of social movement activities and action: demonstrations, marches, occupations of universities and middle- and high- schools and "unknown" sites, such as the Opera, showing that the image, constructed by the mass media and part of the intelligentsia, about an uninterested youth who dreams of a “yuppie” way of life, surfs the internet all day long, is a distorted picture of the reality. High school students networked online and, of course, took initiatives, gathered outside police stations and cast stones at them in a huge country-wide demonstration in protest for the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos. More employees took to the streets, leaving the trade union bureaucracy in the margin. Workers in precarious jobs and second generation immigrants also took to the streets, together with the unemployed and redundant workers. Many young people created groups on various issues or joined existing ones. Some of them discovered the radical left and the antiauthoritarian and anarchist groups. In short, a new generation came to the social movement stage.

How did the society perceive the “December phenomenon”? Let’s use the data of opinion surveys conducted on December 14, 2008, one week after the ignition of the protests.[10] The public saw the events as "social uprising" (60% of respondents against 36% who did not consider them as social uprising "), as a 'mass phenomenon' (60% vs. 36% who believed that it concerns only a minority), holds the police responsible to the police accusing it mainly that they were not prepared (64%), that it failed to take action anticipating the worst to happen (58%), that it has been dissolved due to the domination of political parties in its ranks (53%). There were a relatively high proportion of the respondents who wanted a tougher confrontation with the insurgents (40% a proportion almost equal to those who did not consider the facts as "uprising" and "mass phenomenon"). Finally it is worth noting that 48% of the respondents replied that the events were not incited, 18% said that the events were incited but do not mention by which party, 14% that they were incited by SYRIZA, 5% by PASOK, 4% by New Democracy, 3% that the events were incited but not by political parties, 1% by the Communist Party, 1% by the far Left, and1% by Foreign Forces.

Let’s see now how did the events develop within the context of the labor unions. As noted above, trade unions are considered only as last shelters by the workers and the people in general. However, even work is not considered as a positive value by the workers and the general public; work is valued only as tool. In the summer of 2008, a public opinion survey asked “How much do you agree or disagree with the statement: Work is only a means to gain money and nothing more?”   Out of the whole sample employed / unemployed, a total of 63% agree (30% agree completely, 33% agreed) compared with 24% who disagree (7% disagree completely, 17% disagree) and 13% neither agree or disagree. The same survey finds that a majority of respondents (66%) disagree with the view that the economy works best if the state is smaller and the companies have more freedom of movement. Also 70% thought that the insurance and pension systems should be under the state’s control and not under the administration of private corporations. Finally, the majority (52%) rejects the view that corporate tax relief and reduction of labor costs will be incentives to create jobs. Therefore, the available data show that workers prefer a social welfare state to guarantee basic social rights and that the policy of the government of New Democracy for the privatization of most public enterprises strengthen the private sector in areas under the jurisdiction of this welfare state (education, health, insurance, etc.) contrasts with their views. This contradiction between the government’s policy and the will of the workers is an important element that we need to analyze the importance of social movement action of workers during December 2008 and after the uprising.

Persistent problems in the workplace reflect the difficult working conditions, which cannot be solved by either the employers or with the lack of government intervention. According to another opinion survey that was conducted in the summer of 2008 concerning working conditions, in their main workplace the respondents evaluated low wages (12%) and working hours (4%) as key problems. It is noteworthy that 41% of respondents replied that they have no problem. Compared with the past, the majority of respondents (56%) find no difference in working hours. However, work causes problems on their physical and psychological state and is worth mentioning that work causes stress to 62% of respondents and 15% answer that accidents are frequent or very frequent phenomenon in their workplaces. Another factor of tension in the workplace is discrimination. Although are valued quite low as problems it is worth mentioning that 15% of respondents highlight discrimination between men and women as a problem, while 14% highlight discrimination based on place of origin (Greek-foreign) and 14% stress discrimination based on political dissent. Sexual harassment by hierarchically superiors in the hierarchy is indicated by 9% of respondents (5% not very often, 4% often and frequently). In general, workers seem to be satisfied with their relationships at work: 82% with their colleagues and 77% with supervisors and employers. Strong dissatisfaction is expressed on issues such as salaries and wages (only 43% in find them satisfactory) and advancement at work (63%). 46% of the respondents believe that the specialty in which they were specialized/trained does not correspond to their current work tasks. In general, employees on average have changed 3.22 employers/companies. The way to find a job was to search through acquaintances, friends or family environment (49%).

As we can clearly see risk and instability have become main features in social life. The main points of the “insecurity” are the following: a) the increasing transfer of financial risk by employers to employees, b) the reduction of time of  holding a job and the dependence of employment and wages on the conditions according to the circumstances, c) the uncertainty is damaging to long term economic performance, because they are achieved through an employment relationship based on opportunism, suspicion and lack of commitment, and d) the overloading of both individuals and the wider society with heavy burdens and costs due to the existence and expansion of the number of insecure workers. Thus, a "risk society" is created and more and more people are preoccupied with the future (and security). “Risk” is defined as the systematic way to deal with risks and uncertainties arising in the context of social - economic modernization. The new idea which was smartly launched by the employers during the last twenty years was that of the “world as a market”. Prevailing idea in the workplace is the idea of "potentiality"; the idea of “experience” becomes a “burden” for workers. At the centre of both the employers’ and the state’s discourse the concept of "short-term" has been established.  The essential thing today is everything that can be measured. Almost all institutional and private investors place more emphasis to the quarterly financial results of the firms rather than to their long-term financial strength, so the challenge for employers is to convince employees that everything is precarious and  temporary and that they should not have rights based on seniority and on past experience but based only on the possession of more new "skills" needed by the market, just to function effectively in the short term. 

The key element that distinguishes the new from the traditional organization of trade unions of the so-called Fordist era is the tendency to overcome the conservative and strict adherence to the gains of that phase and to put on a more radical basis the issue of the critique and overthrow of the commoditised labour relations of the capitalist society in the so- called postfordist era. It has been stressed that the trade union movement of the fordist era was organized in the framework of the factory and it also "created associations of resistance, social gathering places, mutual support and solidarity”.[11]

The integration in the surplus-value production process of  human “cognitive, communicative and emotional skills” creates a kind of “non-material labour force” in the sense that the employee is either working only intellectually or in combination e.g. IT technicians, advertisers, employees in the publishing sector, pizza delivery boys, couriers, etc. The question raised by these workers who live and work in precarity conditions regardless of their salary source (capital gains, public budget, etc.) was how could they compete and challenge socially and politically the new capitalist world order of the post-fordist model that dissolves the older forms of labour relations and requires and imposes the creation of new ones: part-time and temporary work, self-employment (often found as hidden salaried work), agency workers, on -call employment, seasonal work, etc.[12] At the same time, the selection of new work relations must achieve the acquisition of rights for precarious workers (young workers, immigrants, students, etc.).[13] Thus, new unions were created in recent years and more were revitalized with the inclusion of new generations of workers who felt the need for collective organization and action as well as with renewing the “repertoires of action” of the old union movement.

ΣΥΝΕΧΙΖΕΤΑΙ (ΤO BE CONTINUED)

---

[1] Thessaloniki is the second city in Greece in terms of population, a major port in the Aegean Sea and industrial center in Northern Greece. It hosts the Ministry of Northern Greece and Thrace. 

[2] For the “cycles of protest, see: a) Tarrow, Sidney. (1998) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and b) Oliver Pamela  and Myers  Daniel. (1997) Diffusion Models of Cycles of Protest as a Theory of Social Movements.  Paper presented at the National Science Foundation. http://www.nd.edu/~dmyers/cbsm/vol3/olmy.pdf

[3] Karamichas J. (2009) “The December 2008 Riots in Greece” Social Movement Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3, August, pp. 289–293

[4] “This uprising was not provoked only by the brutal murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos It  was an expression of the feelings of suffocation,  rage and hate of a whole world (they call it “precariat”)  who suffers daily by the reality of the moral world of the rich: precarity, work itinerancy, humiliation-degradation on a daily basis, police violence in squares, parks, stadiums and streets, suppression of any hopes for living a human life (…) those large segments of the youth who participate are underemployed, unemployed, high school, college and university students, Greek and foreign, public-minded or not, who grasp the opportunity  to express their hate against the cops and the rich, against the symbols of power, wealth and consumerism as well as against what they wish to have but don’t have in this system of fake luxury and ‘wealthy hypocrisy’”. Extract from the Press Release “There is no peace without justice”. Network for Political and Social Rights, 9/12/2009.      

[5] Harvey, David (2005) A Brief History of Neo-liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

[6] http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_economy_2_17/03/2009_307775

[7] See, Stasinopoulou Olga (1997) Kratos pronoias: Istoriki exelixi, sygchrones theoritikes proseggiseis (Welfare State: Historical Development, Modern Theoretical Approaches). Athens: Gutenberg.      

[8] For more details in the reduction of industrial production, see http://www.in.gr/news/article.asp?lngEntityID=984322&lngDtrID=251

[9] For this comparison of preferences between parties and unions, see: a) Mavris Yannis (2008)  Ehoun katarrefsei oi antiprosopeftikoi thesmoi? (Have the representative institutions broken down?) http://www.publicissue.gr/1032/institutions-analysis/  b) Tsakiris Thanassis (2005) “Syndicata kai ergasiakes scheseis. Apo thn ‘crisi’ stin aposyndikalistikopoiisi” (“Trade Unions and Labour Relations. From ‘crisis’ to deunionization”. ) in Bernardakis Christoforos (ed.), Koini Gnomi stin Ellada 2004: Ekloges-Kommata, Koinonikes Ekprosopiseis, Xoros kai Koinonia. (Public Opinion in Greece 2004”: Elections-Parties, Social Representations, Space and Society.)  Athens: Savalas Editions.

[10] Public Issue (2008) Skepseis kai Antilipseis tis Ellinikis Koinis Gnomis apenanti sta prosfata gegonota (Thoughts and View of the Greek public opinion on the recent events). Survey for the daily newspaper Kathimerini http://www.publicissue.gr/1013/epikairotita/

[11] Fernandez Maria Cecilia (2005) “From labor precarity to social precarity – Interview”. Chainworkers 3.0 http://www.chainworkers.org/node/82

[12] In an article in a Greek daily newspaper, Professor Seraphim Seferiadis points to “precarious employment” as a major reason that caused the uprising: “December was a scream, a cry: the explosion of a world who experiences the consequences of social exclusion without hope. We all know its main root-causes, which, one year later, as one may see, worse: precarious employment, limitation of social rights , repressive state violence. However, “December” had political roots: reluctance (or inability) of the forces who claim that they control the dysfunctions of the system (lack of transparency, vide, corruption) to deliver on their promises. “December was so explosive because in only three weeks brought up without any intermediation all those issues they owed to have brought up during a whole historical period but they didn’t.” See Sotirchou Ioanna (2009) “Synedrio ya tis exegersiakes draseis” (Conference on rebellion actions”), Eleftherotypia, 5/12/2009 . www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=109076  The Conference “Rioting and Violent Protest in Comparative Perspective Theoretical Considerations, Empirical Puzzles” took place at the Panteion University in Athens. For videos from the speeches and for more details, see  http://exegersiakessynedrio.blogspot.com/ and  http://englishsynedrio.blogspot.com/  

[13] For the real lack of rights for precariously working people it’s the whole political system to blame: “Neoliberal capitalism has increased inequality and oppression that feed the conflict while at the same time it attempts to repress the conflict  or make it invisible. Last December the conflict broke up due to the tension between the structured social body with the political representatives who take turns at the government without having great differences to divide them on the one side and all those who are excluded from the political order and cannot hammer out the basic claims in the language of politics on the other side. In this sense, the uprising was an expression of a political organization on a zero basis. The demonstrators did not say “We want this or that”. They just said:“We’re here”, “we are against”. We don’t claim this or that right, but “the right to have rights”. They were saying “We the no ones , the pupils, the students, the unemployed, the 600 euros generation, we are everything. We the non-political ones, the silent ones, the different ones, we are the absolutely “universal”, against those who interpret the their particular interests as universal interests”. See Douzinas Costas (2009) “He sygkrousi den echei exafanistei” (“The conflict  has not disappeared” ), Eleftherotypia  5/12/2009 http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=109044