“For the past six months we have been getting paid a week here and a week there. The result is that everyone is owed between two and four months’ back pay. Ten days prior to the occupation the boss promised to pay us two weeks [of back] wages. We said okay but you must then stay current and also pay every month some of the back pay we are owed,” Alekos continued. “The deadline passed and that is when we decided to occupy the offices.”

This action followed many months of mobilizations by the union membership, the unionist said, including several one-day strikes and work stoppages. When the company tried to shut the factory down for an extra week in August, with pay, workers decided to show up for work anyway because they did not know what the bosses might do during their absence.

“We have been pushing for government action. Finally the vice-minister of labor, who should be more correctly called vice-minister for unemployment, intervened after a march of 100 we held to the ministry downtown,” Alekos said. “He arranged for a tripartite meeting where the boss and the union met with him. He heard us all out and then responded that there was nothing the government could do. He said that this is a free market society and if a company is not competitive then it should close. That was the government response.

“Leading up to the Athens Olympic Games we did all sorts of production for installations for the games. Then, there was a collapse in production. Our factory is not the only one in trouble. Our sector, like the textiles, is very hard hit.”

Official unemployment in Greece has risen to 12 percent, even though last year the gross domestic product had record growth, the highest rate in the EU. But this growth was largely due to the massive construction projects leading up to the Olympics.

This mini-boom is over. In certain industries, such as garment, textile, and metal, workers have been hard-hit by layoffs and plant closures, especially of smaller plants. The larger businesses that are more competitive have resorted to “voluntary” early retirements and speedup.

In October, hundreds of textile workers from the northern city of Naoussa held a rally in Athens at the main offices of their employer, Klonatex, a giant textile group. Klonatex closed its plant in Naoussa and locked out the workers. One hundred lost their jobs. This was the latest of a series of plant shut downs in Naoussa, famous for its textile industry. Workers there recently responded to the mounting layoffs with a city-wide general strike.

The crisis in Naoussa follows the shut down of Palco, a garment factory in Athens, and the loss of 500 jobs after a bitter fight with the union.

In a press statement, Klonatex said it is seeking to boost profits by becoming more competitive. “This could include internal mergers,” it said, “and there are likely to be layoffs. One option may be moving plants to other countries, with China and the Balkans under consideration.”

Other companies have already taken such steps. Palco, for example, moved its operations to Bulgaria. According to studies cited by the Athens daily Eleftherotypia, 75 percent of garment production in Greece has moved to other countries, especially Bulgaria and China.

Despite the growing insecurity from the deteriorating economic situation, many workers, like those at Fyrogenis, are fighting back.

“During this whole time the company put us in a dilemma. They put it this way: ‘We either pay your wages or we buy raw materials for production. If you push us then we’ll be forced to shut down because we can’t do both.’ In the meantime, they are 10 years behind in social security payments to the government. For a while we bought into their logic because we wanted to keep our jobs,” Alekos said. “But we learned that we have to organize and fight collectively to gain even our back pay. On November 3, we decided to hold our union membership meeting right in the administration offices to discuss what action to take next. We voted unanimously to strike the next day. That afternoon, after so much stonewalling, the company came through with two weeks pay. We returned to work.”

The bosses then informed the workers the plant was sold to a French company. “We’ll see what the new situation will bring,” Alekos said. “But, we won’t let our guard down. As part of the fight we have filed a suit against the company for back pay. In case they stop paying us again or decide to close, we will activate the suit.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home