AKEL Declaration on International Workers’ Day 2023
30 April 2023, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
On the occasion of International Workers’ Day, AKEL addresses a greeting of struggle and unity to the whole of the working class, to all the workers of Cyprus, Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Maronites, Armenians, Latins and immigrants working in our country.
International Workers’ Day is the day of all working people, of all those who drive the economy and produce the wealth in the country, of all those who live by their own labour and not by the labour of others. All workers, whether they work on building scaffolds and work sites, or in shops, hotels, supermarkets, offices, workshops and classrooms. Whether they are men or women. Whether they work in the public or private sector. Whether they work on one side or the other of the barbed wire that divides our island. Whether they speak Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian or Arabic, or any other language. Whether they are young people who are now starting work or people who are looking for work but cannot find it, or people who have worked for a lifetime and are now retired.
At the same time, International Workers’ Day is a day of honor and remembrance of workers from the past who painted the banners of the organised workers’ struggle red with their bloody sacrifices. We pay tribute to the pioneers of the 1886 Chicago May Day and to all the heroes of the working class around the world.
We honor the fighters of Cyprus, both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, who founded the class-based trade union movement and through their organisation and assertions wrote history with their struggles and sacrifices, but also with the gains and rights they won, making the life of workers really better.
International Workers’ Day is above all a day for the present and the future of the people of labour, to make the demands of workers for which they have been fighting all the other days of the year heard even louder. For the modern needs of workers, for their dignity at work and in life.
Particularly on this Workers’ Day, but also in the conditions of the sweeping expensiveness and prices increases, AKEL joins the trade union movement in the struggle for the restoration of the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA), which is currently at the forefront of the news…The COLA is a valuable gain of the workers of Cyprus which protects the purchasing power of wages. AKEL, together with the trade union movement, demands its restoration and extension to every working person in our country. For us, the employers’ associations’ demand for the abolition of the COLA is therefore out of the question. What is up for discussion is with what timeframe the COLA will be restored on the basis of its philosophy as envisaged in the 2017 Transitional Agreement. The proposal presented by the Minister of Labour on the COLA is falls obviously well below working people’s aspirations.
At the same time, AKEL will continue to struggle for all the great demands of the people of labour: for drastic measures to curb expensiveness and price hikes, the extension and safeguarding of collective agreements, for substantive improvements in the minimum wage, the regulation of teleworking, for combating false self-employment through the practice of the purchase for services, for strengthening measures regarding the safety and health of workers, the defence of the social character of the National Health Scheme (GESY), for the abolition of the 12% penalty imposed on pensions for those opting to retire at 63 and for a modern social policy that embraces young couples and working parents. On the issue of the foreign labour strategy, we share the concerns of the trade union movement and demand changes to ensure that it is not a mechanism for the erosion of collective agreements and the promotion of a cheap labour force.
AKEL calls on the workers of Cyprus to participate in mass numbers in tomorrow’s Worker’s May Day mobilisations organised by the Pancyprian Federation of Labour (PEO) in all cities.
Long live International Workers’ Day!
