Workers' Control in Greece

[Dan Clore]

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://eagainst.com/articles/workers-control-in-greece-eleftherotypias-workers-are-back-with-their-own-newspaper/
Workers’ control in Greece: Eleftherotypia’s workers are back with their
own newspaper
17/02/2012
By Moissis Litsis
* via Coalition of Resistance

Here it is! Done! The workers at Eleftherotypia, one of the biggest and
most prestigious Greek daily newspapers, go forward undertaking the
great endeavour of editing their own newspaper ‘Workers at Eleftherotypia‘!


From Wednesday, Feb. 15th, kiosks all over the country are displaying
one more newspaper next to the usual ones, a newspaper written by its
own workers. This is a newspaper which not only aims at bringing the
fight of Eleftherotypia’s workers to the fore, but also seeks to be a
newspaper giving real information, especially at such critical times for
Greece.

The 800 men and women workers at the firm H.K. Tegopoulos, which edits
the Eleftherotypia newspaper, from journalists to technician staff, from
cleaners to clerks and caretakers, have gone on continuous strike since
2011, Dec. 22th as their employer stopped paying their salaries in
August 2011

Eleftherotypia workers, seeing that their employer has requested
application of section nr. 99 of the Bankruptcy Act, in order to protect
himself against his creditors, i.e. in reality his workers to whom he
owes a total of approximately 7 million euro in unpaid salaries (!) have
decided to have their own newspaper published, at the same time as
continuing mobilisations and taking legal action. A newspaper
distributed by news agencies all over the country, at the price of 1
euro (against the usual 1.30 euro for the other newspapers), in order to
provide financial support to the strike fund.

As they haven’t been paid for the last seven months, the female and male
workers at Eleftherotypia are being subsided by a solidarity movement
from various collectivities or even isolated citizens who donate money
or make donations in kind (foodstuffs, blankets, etc.). By publishing
their own newspaper and thanks to the money collected through its sales,
they will be able to support their strike financially without any kind
of mediation. In other words, they are making progress towards some kind
of self-management.

The newspaper has been produced in a friendly workshop, in an ambiance
that is reminiscent of clandestine newspaper editing, since the
management, as soon as they found out that the journalists were going
ahead with their publishing enterprise, first cut off the heating, then
the system used by the sub-editors to write their articles, and last,
shut down the workshop itself, even though access to the newspaper’s
offices still remains free for the time being. Worker’s Eleftherotypia
was printed at printing works that do not belong to the company, with
the support of the press workers’ unions, because the staff of its own
printing works felt reluctant to occupy their work place.

The management, afraid of the possible impact of the self-managed
publication of the newspaper, have threatened to take legal action; they
are using intimidation by threatening to fire the editorial committee
who were democratically elected by the general meeting of strikers.

However, Greek public opinion, and not only Eleftherotypia readers, had
been eagerly waiting for its publication – we were overwhelmed by
messages cheering the journalists for publishing the newspaper
themselves – since dictatorship of the markets is coupled with media
dictatorship that makes Greek reality difficult to read and interpret.
Had it not been for the general consensus that was maintained by most
media in 2010, based on the argument that there was no alternative to
Papandreou government signing the first Memorandum, whose patent failure
has now been acknowledged by everyone, we might have seen the Greek
people rising up much earlier in order to overturn a policy that has
proven disastrous for all Europe.

The case of Eletherotypia is not unique. Tens of private sector
enterprises have long ceased paying their employees, and their
stockholder have virtually abandoned them waiting for better times… In
the press, the situation is even worse. Because of the crisis, the banks
have stopped lending to companies while employers refuse to pay for it
out of their pockets and choose to call on section 99 – at least 100
listed on the stock exchange companies have already done so – trying to
save time in view of a possible bankruptcy of Greece and a probable exit
of the euro zone.

Eleftherotypia was created in 1975 as “its sub-editors’ newspaper”
during the period of radicalization that followed the fall of
dictatorship in 1974. Today, in times marked by the new “dictatorship of
international creditors”, Eleftherotypia’s women and men workers have
the ambition to become the bright example of a totally different way of
information, resisting against “terror” from the employers as well as
the press lords, who would not like at all to see workers take in their
hands the fate of information.

* Moisis Litsis is an economic editor, a member of the Editorial
Committee of “Worker’s Eleftherotypia”, and a substitute member of the
Board of Directors of the Greek Press Workers’ Union (ESIEA).


--
Dan Clore

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"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_