The revelations about the embezzlement of 2 million euros by Giannis Panagopoulos, the president of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE), an ETUC/ITUC member, are the culmination of a long course of deep decay and degeneration of the leadership of the highest-level trade union organization of private-sector workers. A course that has consistently supported the strategy of capital, the EU, and governments of every political shade, governments that found in the leadership of the GSEE their most willing allies for promoting anti-people policies and hundreds of anti-worker laws.
The leadership of the GSEE has written yet another black chapter in its history, a history of betrayal of workers’ struggles that would take volumes to record. A peak act of betrayal was the historic abolition of the 8-hour workday and the handing over of the National General Collective Labor Agreement to the state and employers. For these, this leadership not only did nothing, but mocked workers’ struggles, claiming that “strikes have had their day.”
No one can forget that while hundreds of unions, federations, and regional unions were organizing the fight against plans to impose a 13-hour workday, the leadership of the GSEE was secretly negotiating with the minister of labor and the industrialists a disgraceful agreement on Collective Labor Agreements. An agreement tailor-made for capital, which legalizes poverty, entrenched low wages, and the dismantling of workers’ rights.
They also openly opposed strikes and struggles over the crime in Tempi, attempting to whitewash the criminal responsibilities of the state and business groups.
For years, the unions affiliated with PAME have exposed the real role of employer- and government-aligned trade unionism. A tough battle has been waged, and continues, to change the direction of the movement and free it from the deadly embrace of the state and employers.
We confronted the mechanisms of fraud and manipulation of union elections set up by “labor bosses” to falsify workers’ will, silence militant voices, and keep the GSEE as a service office for employers—using for this purpose funds that were supposedly intended for workers’ training.
One such mechanism turned out to be, among others, the GSEE Institute of Labor, which was used as a Trojan horse to push anti-worker policy into the unions, advance the co-optation and buy-off of trade unionists, and “implement” programs that “secured” fabricated balances in non-existent unions.
This is not only a Greek phenomenon. A few years ago, the rot of bribery and degeneration of European social democracy (ETUC) was exposed, as it backed reactionary provisions with blood-stained Qatari petrodollars and other lobby funds. The president of the GSEE is a member of the Executive Committee of the ETUC and of the General Council of the ITUC.
These are the labor bosses; this is the president of the GSEE. Those who build careers on the exploitation of workers. Those who, when workers denounced them as a trade-union mafia, found a protective shield in the New Democracy government, which sent riot police to guard them and keep them in their seats. Just as now, the New Democracy government and the minister of Labor tried to secure them a role and existence through the disgraceful agreement abolishing collective labor agreements.
It’s a leadership that belongs to the government, the industrialists, the EU, and their political parties!
Every worker must think carefully. Unions are not the private estate of these types; they are the home of the workers. Absence from active participation leaves space for employer- and government-aligned operatives to act within the trade union movement.
The hopeful shift in balances of power taking place in dozens of unions, federations, and regional unions is the hope, and it must continue.
Let the struggle intensify against the poison of social partnership and class collaboration. Let the struggle grow for the contemporary needs of workers against a system of war, poverty, and exploitation.
Class-oriented unions, not employer-controlled unions!
10.2.26
