Solidarity greetings to the striking dockworkers in Piraeus/Athens – Sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Dimitris Daggli

To all colleagues on strike in the port of Piraeus,

to the trade union ENEDEP

Dear colleagues,

On behalf of the European Coordination of the ICOR, we send warmest greetings of solidarity for your strike. You are full of rage and anger about the horrible death of your colleague. He was killed by negligent and inhumane working conditions at the docks and container terminals; and sacrificed in cold blood for the profits of the port capitalists of COSCO.

We have great respect for your solidarity actions and the courageous strike with which you commemorate your colleague Dimitris. But you connect your completely justified outrage with important demands of the dockworkers for increasing the number of employees per shift, for abolishing the opposite shifts which exhaust the workers, for transforming all contracts to full-time contracts and for establishing health and security committees of the workers. You have our full solidarity for this!

It distinguishes your strike that it receives great solidarity from the population of Piraeus and Athens, from other workforces and that many seamen show solidarity. These have resolved to conduct a 48-hour strike from 10 to 12 November. Internationally the dockworkers union of Livorno, Italy and the Turkish transportation union Nakliyat-Is have announced solidarity rallies.

These inhuman working conditions are also a result of the politics of the International Monetary Fund, the EU and the German Federal Government. Their crisis dictate demanded great burdens and worsening conditions from the Greek people and workers. That included the privatization of ports such as in Piraeus, but also of power suppliers, post offices, waterworks, railways, etc. This made the way clear for the Chinese company COSCO to be able to purchase 50 % of the port of Piraeus in 2016 and a further 16 % of the shares a short time ago.

The ICOR, International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations, is a worldwide amalgamation with now 62 member organizations. Joining in the ICOR is an obligation to organize international solidarity with workers' strikes, popular struggles, rebellions, hunger uprisings and liberation movements in the struggle against capitalist and imperialist oppression. Therefore we will make your courageous strike known within the ICOR, inform about it on our website and promote further international solidarity.

Long live international solidarity! Workers' solidarity is stronger! For a future for the workers in freedom, democracy – socialism!

Jeroen Toussaint and Joachim Griesbaum; European Coordinators of the ICOR

Coordinationeurope@yahoo.co.uk