PAME and the trade unions of Greece express our solidarity with the working class of Portugal, with the unions in the public and private sectors, and with CGTP-IN, who on June 3 are waging the battle of the General Strike against the new anti-worker “package” of the country’s government.The so-called “labor package” is nothing less than yet another attack on the very lives of workers. It provides for easier and cheaper dismissals, the expansion and greater flexibility of working time, an attack on wages and income, the abolition of holiday bonuses, new restrictions on Collective Agreements, and an attack on the right to strike and to trade union action. From country to country, throughout the EU, under different pretexts but with the same goal, governments of every shade are tearing down workers’ rights.The EU is the mechanism that supports and directs this anti-worker policy and offensive. Its directives and strategies for “competitiveness and profitability,” “flexibility,” and the “adaptation of the labor market” mean greater profits for business groups and greater exploitation for workers.This offensive is directly linked to the war economy and the deeper involvement in the rivalries and imperialist wars of the USA, NATO, and the EU. At the same time that peoples are paying the price of soaring costs for basic goods, fuel, and rent, with wages frozen and cuts in Health, Education, Social Security, and Welfare, billions are being handed over for armaments, military missions, and the war fronts in Ukraine and the Middle East.Governments, whether they call themselves right-wing, social-democratic, liberal, or “progressive,” serve the same path: the profitability of big business, the competitiveness of capital, and war preparation. Sometimes with the whip of repression, sometimes with the poison of “social consensus,” sometimes with the blackmail of “growth” and “national goals,” they want workers stripped of their rights and with their heads bowed, so that they work more, for less, and with greater intensity for the profits of the monopolies, as well as for the needs of the war machine.PAME stands with the working class of Portugal. Your struggle is our struggle too. Because everywhere, we are facing the same offensive from the same enemy: the business groups, the governments, and the EU.The answer lies in organizing in unions, in internationalist solidarity, and in the struggle to overthrow the policy that sacrifices our lives for the profits of capital and for its wars.
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