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
The new trade union collectivities
Up to now it seems like the debate is based on abstract forms. The "squatters" against the "bureaucrats". On 19/12/2008 squatters who were occupying the Athens University of Economics (ASOEE) and squatters from the General Assembly of Insurgent Workers “invaded” the premises of MRB polling company and OTE (Hellenic Telecommunication Organization) call center (No. 11888) briefly interrupting the production process and handing-out the following text to the operators working in these companies under precarious employment conditions (seasonal, part-time, agency workers, etc.). Both the target of the intervention and the terminology of the text reveal the social origins of the squatters who come from similar working relationships and know from experience what happens at work:
MESSAGE WITHOUT CHARGE
You work as an operator. Your job is to answer thousands calls to give out information necessary for the movement of commodities in the metropolis (e.g. 11888). Or you always make the calls for the conduct of market surveys / polls to know so that the bosses know the profiles of consumers/citizen to whom they are addressed. Or at worst to make the calls to convince people to become would-be consumers for useless goods you are forced to promote. Common conditions in all these jobs is the control of production through the machine, the head that rings, the dead time and the nipping eyes in front of a screen. Common term also is the hourly wage of 3.5 euros or piecework and the consequent blackmail to meet the frantic production standards of the company, as well as the resultant “lame” insurance stamps. Commonly speaking, a miserable and thankless (crap) job done either for some pocket money (for students) or due to unemployment or as a second job for "professionals" (precariously employed).
You work as an operator. Your job is to answer thousands calls to give out information necessary for the movement of commodities in the metropolis (e.g. 11888). Or you always make the calls for the conduct of market surveys / polls to know so that the bosses know the profiles of consumers/citizen to whom they are addressed. Or at worst to make the calls to convince people to become would-be consumers for useless goods you are forced to promote. Common conditions in all these jobs is the control of production through the machine, the head that rings, the dead time and the nipping eyes in front of a screen. Common term also is the hourly wage of 3.5 euros or piecework and the consequent blackmail to meet the frantic production standards of the company, as well as the resultant “lame” insurance stamps. Commonly speaking, a miserable and thankless (crap) job done either for some pocket money (for students) or due to unemployment or as a second job for "professionals" (precariously employed).
These are jobs where more
and more people work because the number of jobs offered by bosses is of limited range. Indeed ,we are beginning
to suspect that the proposals of those at the "top" for 3 days work
per week are designed to turn the people to such flexible employment
relationships. Obviously
not to work less, but to work at more than one jobs and survive by adding
pocket money from each job. Besides,
it is quite convenient for the masters to create “workers-chameleons” who as temps
are incapable to organize their colleagues, to shape demands, to make claims.
Unavoidably, all efforts of several new workers in such jobs to organize
collective structures in recent years (e.g. on voluntary basis), failed not
because they lack the appetite, but because insecurity in these areas leaves no
room for constant intervention .
While these are unequal battles, for the official trade unionists this category of workers simply does not exist. Suffice it also that the left and the mass media stick a label such as “the 400 euros generation”. So you have to show them your thankfulness for having found you even though you know that nothing ever changes to the better in these jobs. After all, the paternalists have more important work to do than to act against the flexibilisation of work: you know now, to sell out strikes, to sign 1 (one) euro wage increases, to be photographed together with the manufacturers of SEV etc.
According also to the well known “market guy” J. Panagopoulos, the proper workers are at work during the day and they don’t have free time to occupy the trade union palaces of the GSEE. We must inform the said paternalist that a large segment of the youth and the workers who for two weeks now clash with the police, demonstrate in the streets and occupy public buildings, are employed in such jobs and therefore, the flexible hours and the condition of precariousness provide the option that between rebellion and working to sometimes choose the former. Like a form of invisible and informal strike. Individual methods always exist. From taking a leave to participate in the demonstration to quitting this kind of work for a span of time, particularly since you're used to change work as you change shirts.
As there are individual ways of blocking the hectic pace of production. From a cigarette or a walk to the toilet that take longer than as usual or other 'underground' ways of denying intensification (because there are also companies that make cut from the salary according to the time it takes you to pee). Each worker does whatever he/she can in order to work less, since after all they do work that offers no benefit to the society, who do not find any meaning in this work beyond the money. For this reason also the more these jobs are on the increase there is no alternative left but to sabotage them. If so many thousands of bad employees cannot go on a classic type of strike, they can certainly destroy the regularity of the commodity operation of the metropolitan center, participating along with other insurgents in confrontational events following the murder of 15 year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos. Apart from the outbursts of anger, one of the issues is to help the individual counterproductive mood to find those paths through which it will be transformed into collective mood for blocking the alienated labor and everyday life.
Since, then, GSEE disregards the world of flexible work, we invite you to the liberated by workers building as well as to other occupations, to organize together our collective action.
Employees, temporary, students, unemployed from the General Assembly Insurgent Workers and the Occupation of the Athens University of Economics.
This conflict between old and new unionism that occurred with the occupation of the offices was visible in the mass media that do not usually play the easy card of impression. We read in a center-right Sunday newspaper that:
This conflict between the two worlds is
real. It does not mean that the young people who
occupied the building of GSEE and identified themselves as anarchists,
independent, anti-authoritarians, and anything else outside of the dominant
categorization of ideas in our country, representing deservedly the entire
invisible world of job insecurity. Because often the micro-authoritarianism
and maximalism in the behavior of this extra-parliamentary tendency, dogmatism
in communication, may result in turning private sector workers away at the same
speed they leave the official trade unions. Nevertheless, the occupation was a
scream. It has createδ
a real opposition within the unions that tend to live with their secrets and
their spoils (“rousfeti” in Greek). Now, GSEE trade unionists cannot pretend
that they know nothing. And
that they do not see what we see every day. They represent only the very confident
ones in the labor market: they have lost their real role and have become a
closed guild; that young people identify them with power, a power which union
officials themselves reluctantly leave after retirement. Moreover we know that young people
ridicule the boring union meetings with the prefixed decisions by the
correlation of party forces. They see the organizational structures of trade
unions the thumbnail of the parties, and cauterize the vanities of trade
unionists that hold their thrones as springboards for the transition to
politics, or even for their careers.
The main unions covering the working people who work
in these kinds of jobs are either older unions that have been reorganized by
the new generations of workers in order to match the new needs or new unions
that were created in recently founded companies such as in high-tech industries
and new unions that cover temporary and part-time workers and other precarious
jobs in industries such as the courier services. Some of the unions were
founded after the refusal of official unions to include among their membership
precarious workers (e.g. agency workers in banks and other companies of the
financial sector) and their creation has accelerated since the uprising, which
breathed the spirit of self-organization. Below we refer to some of the most
dynamic and radical unions:
1.Union of Workers in Call Centers of OTE “Konstantina
Kuneva”
1.
Founded on December 19, 2008 after a brief
drive for collecting signatures. The union was met
with strong acceptance by the workers and was formal approved by the First
Instance Court. The demands that
the union forwarded had to do with the observance of basic human rights in the
workplace, the lack of tolerance for cases of violence (psychological and
physical) against part-timers and newly hired workers that had increased. There were also
demands for granting exam leaves to student-workers on the sole precondition to
present a certificate of studies, because actually the granting of the leave
depended on the superintendent’s will, payment of in-house training that takes
place just after the appointment, and, of course, the establishment of the
right to insurance. Except the employer’s indifference the union met the
hostility of the official trade unionists that culminated to the act of preventing
the new union’s representatives to exercise their right of speech at the
Nationwide Conference of OME-OTE (OTE Workers' Federation).
2. Panhellenic WorkersUnion
of Tim Hellas-WIND (PASETIM).
2. Panhellenic Workers
The Union was founded in 2005 and since then it is the
main and most dynamic union in the mobile phone industry in Greece Union .
The vortex of crisis did not surprise the members of the union who were ready
to organize industrial action and strikes to save
jobs. In July 2008 the union
organized the first work stoppage requesting the signing of a satisfactory
collective labor agreement. That stoppage was the consequence of the break down
of the bargaining negotiations with the employer and of the failure of a
massive show of protest at the headquarters in May. The employers responded by persecuting members of the Administrative
Board of the union for trivial occasions. Finally
the contract was signed after intense pressure and protests that included the
collection of signatures, the frequent general assemblies, the protest
presentations and work stoppages. In the uprising of December 2008 many members
participated in demonstrations and took part at the occupation of the offices
of GSEE. During 2009, the bosses
hardened their attiudes, whereas the PASETIM participated in general and sector
strikes and recently problems came up due to the economic crisis and the
erroneous investment strategy of the company’s management team. The management
tried to drives hundreds of worker to early retirement, which means mass layoffs. Strikes are now frequent
and passionate. More and more workers and employees of the company participated
in the strikes (e.g. in the Panhellenic General Strike on March,11 2010) and in
the mass blockades of the company’s headquarters on Athinon Avenue
3. The Panhellenic Union
of Salaried Technicians
This is one of the relatively new
unions which operate in the field of salaried technicians (engineers,
geologists, technologists, designers, technicians high school graduates), that
is all the technicians working as salaried employees in private sector
companies. It was founded in June 1999
in Athens
4. Book and Paper Sector
Employees Union .
This is one of the oldest unions in Greece Union made
innovations in terms of both organization building and strategy and tactics.
Since to strike in private sector companies is a risky operation, the Union uses the tactic of blockade and collections of
signatures by targeting those companies that implement anti-union measures or
proceed to lay-offs.[3]
5. Postal & Courier Workers Union of Attica .
This is one of the most radical unions in Athens Attica drafted a new constitution [4]
6. Union of
Professors in Private Teaching Centres
Private tutoring institutes’ professors are a mass
sector of precarious workers in Greece Single
High School
7. Waiters and Chefs Union
This is another reorganized union that gained mass membership due to the
opening of many taverns, fast-food restaurants, snack bar, catering companies,
pubs and bars etc. The union follows a self-organizing strategy[6] encouraging the creation of
similar organizing initiatives throughout the country.[7]
8. All Attican Union for Janitors and Home Service Personnel
The contemporary era janitors’ union in Greece Albania , Bulgaria ,
Russia , Ukraine , and some of them come from Bangladesh and Palestine Prefecture of Magnesia
9. Union
of National Theater Workers
The Union of National Theater Workers is a new union
which comprises of props, lighting technicians, stage managers and other
theatrical staff. Members of union took
part in the occupation of the offices of GSEE as well as in the occupation
of the Opera building. [9]
There are many unions created every month in Greece Athens , Thessaloniki
Some of these groupings cooperate through a network of internet sites
and blogs spreading information, ideas, texts, and calls for action. There are
blogs that collect and share information on cases of employer harassment,
employee complaints, calls for general assemblies, ideological and theoretical
discussion, invitations for events etc. Examples: http://anticallcenter.wordpress.com/, http://www.adeho.gr/ (cultural jamming), http://www.antistasigr.blogspot.com/ (information portal),
http://noikiasmenoi-ergazomenoi.blogspot.com/ (agency workers) and many others.
5.
Preliminary conclusions
As a first conclusion we could say that the December
uprising was a milestone for the trade union movement in Greece
a. the establishment of decision-making structures based
on the principles of direct democracy and revocability of representatives,
b. the enrichment of traditional repertoires of action
with new types of struggle, such as workplace occupations, flexible work
stoppages and strikes, blockages of crossways and public service/government
buildings.
[1]In a recent announcement on the occasion of the persecution
of a member of the Union’s Administrative Board there is a call to action: “For
one more time our Union is in the need to
defend our colleague’s (Thanassis Grammozis) right to work. We have already
started this struggle with two mass blockades of the building at Athinon Avenue Union ’s email-box).
The Administrative Board of the Panhellenic Workers’ Union
of TIM (WIND) - PASETIM.
[2]
“’Precarity’ or we could better say ‘work insecurity’ is expressed as ‘working
part-time’ (time wages) ans as fixed term contracts (three or four months
work). The composition of “precarious workers” has changed. In the past these
jobs were preferred by students who did not want to work full-time (8 hours).
As time goes by, the proportion of students is decreasing and the proportion of
worker who are forced to work as hostages under these humiliating labor
relations is increasing…Pioneer firms in the destruction of labour rights are
the big bookshops (e.g. Eleftheroudakis, Papasotiriou etc.) See announcement of
the union cited in Bolota Μyrto (2008) «I exegersi tou precariatou! (“The
rebellion of the precariat”’, Galera, No. 30 March,
http://galera.gr/magazine/modules/articles/article.php?id=1101)
[3] For more
details see: Tsakiris Thanassis (mimeo) “An
interesting direct democracy experiment: Trade unionism in the publishing and
paper milling sector” Paper presented at the 8thConference of the
Hellenic Political Science Association. Democracy at a Crossroads: Threats and Challenges at the
Dawn of the 21st Century. Athens, Panteion
University, 26-28 May 2008.
[8]Athanasiοs Tsakiris, Maria Pendaraki, Irene Savvaki, and
Paraskevi Kaliva (2009)“Constantina, you
are not alone”: janitors/cleaners’ unionism in Greece
[9]
http://www.seeth.net
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