Army operation against Greek truck drivers: A warning to European workers

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Army operation against Greek truck drivers: A warning to European workers
4 August 2010

The conscription of striking Greek truck drivers and the deployment of the army
as strikebreakers marks a new stage in the attacks on the Greek and European
working class.

Up to now, the social democratic government under Prime Minister Giorgos
Papandreou had largely relied upon the unions to keep resistance against the
austerity measures agreed with the European Union and International Monetary
Fund under control. The unions have called a series of one-day strikes and
protests, while in principle supporting the course being followed by the government.

>From the standpoint of the European financial elite, the result has been
remarkable. An assessment made by the Hellenic Foundation for European and
Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) of the first four months of austerity measures
concludes that the Greek government will succeed in reducing real wages in 2010
by 20-30 percent. This is being achieved through a combination of wage cuts, a
VAT (sales tax) increase and rising inflation.

“What the government of Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou is trying to do is the
largest reduction of a budget deficit that has ever been undertaken by a member
of the euro-zone in such a short time,” writes ELIAMAP staff writer Jens Bastian
in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The challenge is like running a marathon at a
sprint. Greek society has never experienced such cuts in wages in the past
twenty years!”

The truck drivers strike posed a serious threat to the government’s austerity
measures. Unlike the actions by workers in the civil service and in industry,
whose trade unions called 24-hour stoppages and then sent them back to work
without any serious damage to the economy, the six-day strike by some 33,000
truck drivers shut down important sections of the economy.

In particular, the lack of fuel at gas stations coincided with the high season
in the tourism industry, one of the country’s main sources of income. But other
industries were also severely hampered by the lack of transportation.

By the third day of the strike, the government sought recourse to a rarely used
law. It effectively conscripted the strikers into the army by decree, and
ordered them to start to work again or face draconian penalties. When the truck
drivers opposed this move and sought to continue the strike, the government
deployed the army to break the strike and supply airports, power stations and
other facilities with fuel.

The deployment of the army had an immediate effect—not on the strikers, who
resisted stubbornly—but on the transport union PSXEM, which had been trying to
strike a deal with the government and now has completely capitulated.

The use of the army is particularly significant because memories are fresh in
Greece of the brutal military dictatorship that ruled from 1967 to 1974. The
Greek colonels carried out a coup on April 21, 1967 in order to prevent an
election victory by the bourgeois politician George Papandreou, the grandfather
of the current prime minister. Thousands of political opponents were jailed,
tortured and killed. George Papandreou himself died in 1968 under house arrest.

After the fall of the dictatorship, some of the colonels were held to account
and sentenced to prison terms. If Papandreou’s grandson now deploys the army to
break a strike, the military can only understand this as a signal that it is
needed once again in order to ensure that “order” is restored in society.

The entire European elite, including in Greece, has responded with satisfaction
to Papandreou’s decision to break the truck drivers strike by using coercive
measures and mobilizing the army. There was not a word of protest, even from the
supposedly left bourgeois parties and trade unions.

In Greece itself, agreement reaches deep into the camp of the petty-bourgeois
“left.” Dimitris Papadimoulis, a parliamentary deputy of the Coalition of the
Radical Left (SYRIZA), attacked the truck drivers, saying their strike was
“taking the form of strangling the market, queues at petrol stations, etc. and
does not have any social support.”

Fotis Kouvelis, the leader of a left splinter from SYRIZA, called on the truck
drivers to end their strike “in order to facilitate the re-starting of talks, on
the basis of abolishing the old closed shop regime,” i.e., on the basis of the
government’s demands.

Other representatives of SYRIZA and the Greek Communist Party (KKE) condemned
the government’s coercive measures in words, but did not raise a finger to
support the truck drivers, who were also isolated by the major trade unions.

The truck drivers are fighting for their survival. Most are owner-operators and
have invested their entire life savings (up to €300,000) to buy the required
license. The subsequent resale of the license forms the basis of their pensions.
The abolition of the licensing system, as demanded by the government, not only
opens up the Greek transport system to the big European haulage firms,
destroying the livelihoods of the Greek truck drivers, it also nullifies their
pensions at a stroke.

The liberalization of trucking and many other occupations—taxi drivers, lawyers,
pharmacists, architects, accountants, etc.—is one of the key conditions demanded
by the EU and the IMF in return for the 110-billion-euro aid package for Greece.
In this manner, the cost of the financial crisis and the bailout of the banks is
to be offloaded onto the poor, the working class and wide layers of the
self-employed.

Herein lies the deeper significance of the deployment of the military in Greece.
This country is to serve as a testing ground for the implementation of the
austerity programmes that are being planned across Europe. These measures are so
broad and so severe that they cannot be achieved by democratic means.

Because such large sections of society are involved, including layers that once
considered themselves part of the middle class, many of the traditional
conservative parties are in crisis. In Germany, Chancellor Merkel’s coalition of
the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU) and Free
Democratic Party (FDP) is paralyzed by internal conflicts. In Italy,
Berlusconi’s governing party (People of Freedom) has broken apart. In France,
Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) has slumped in the polls. This is
why in many countries the ruling elite is turning to the social democrats and
their middle-class “left” satellites to enforce the attacks against the working
class.

In Greece, the replacement of the conservative Karamanlis government by
Papandreou’s PASOK was the precondition for the implementation of the current
austerity programme. In Germany, a deliberate campaign is underway to promote
the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens. The two parties, ruling in
coalition under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, imposed the Agenda 2010 welfare
“reforms” which did more to impoverish broad layers of workers than the current
conservative government under Angela Merkel (CDU).

But such social democratic governments can only be a temporary solution. They
owe their electoral success largely to the decline of the conservatives, the
propaganda of the bourgeois media and the support of the petty-bourgeois
pseudo-lefts. They have lost their social base among workers and largely rest
upon the bureaucratic apparatus of the unions and their own party apparatus.
Once in government, they are exposed to the same process of political erosion as
the conservatives.

Therefore, efforts are being made to find new, authoritarian forms of rule.
These preparations can be seen in one form or another in all European countries.

In Hungary, the right-wing nationalist Fidesz and the openly fascist Jobbik have
benefited from the decline of the social democrats and are now seeking to
consolidate their rule by inciting racism, raising tensions with neighboring
countries and developing authoritarian structures.

In Holland, the racist Freedom Party of Geert Wilders has provided the majority
for the government and will be formally incorporated into the coalition.

And in France, the government is seeking to mobilize the followers of Jean-Marie
Le Pen’s National Front through provocative legal initiatives against Roma and
Muslims.

The increased social weight being afforded the military is also a general
phenomenon. Conscript armies are being replaced by professional armies, which
are being brutalized in battle in Afghanistan and in other foreign missions. The
use of the military at home is being discussed openly under the pretext of
“fighting terrorism.” In Germany, an open conflict is raging between the two
chambers of the Supreme Court, who are arguing whether such military operations
should now be approved following 60 years during which they were banned.

In this context, the use of the military against striking truck drivers in
Greece sends a warning to the entire European working class. The extent of the
austerity measures that either have been agreed upon or are being planned make
violent social conflict inevitable. The Social Democrats, the trade unions and
their petty-bourgeois “left” supporters play a key role in enforcing these
attacks. By restraining and paralyzing the working class, they give the ruling
elite the necessary time to prepare more right-wing and authoritarian forms of rule.

Everything now depends upon working people intervening independently in
political events. They must break from the influence of the Social Democrats and
trade unions and establish their own party, one that uncompromisingly defends
their own interests against the demands of the financial oligarchy.

The political basis of such a party must be an international socialist programme
that places the social needs of the mass of the population above the profit
demands of the banks and corporations. The International Committee of the Fourth
International is building such parties around the world.

Peter Schwarz

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/pers-a04.shtml

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