AKEL Workers May Day Declaration 2020
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 30 April 2020
AKEL pays tribute to the pioneers of the working class around the world. It honors the founders of the workers movement of Cyprus. It honors the pioneers of the struggles, assertions and strikes of the Cypriot worker because with their gains they changed the lives of all the coming generations of workers for the better. It honors the joint workers struggles of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, who confronted not only employers, but also chauvinism and anti-communism.
AKEL addresses a militant salute to the whole of the working class, to all the working people in Cyprus. Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Maronites, Armenians and Latins and to all foreign workers living and working in our country. To all working people whether they work, on the building site, in the office, in the factory, in the shop, or whether they are unemployed. We convey our special greetings of solidarity to the workers in the hospitals, pharmacies, supermarkets, bakeries, the delivery workers and all the working people who are bearing the biggest burden and dangers of the health crisis.
The pandemic the world is going through, is dramatically exacerbating all the capitalist system’s deadlocks and, in addition, it is loading the painful bill of the neoliberal policies that have undermined public health systems around the world on the peoples. At the same time, it is accelerating the emergence of a new crisis with undefined dimensions and a new round of unemployment, impoverishment and inequality.
All working people know that big capital using the impact of the pandemic as an excuse will attempt to exploit the situation to further deregulate labour relations, to proceed to redundancies and cuts in pay, to put labour and trade union rights in quarantine forever. This danger also exists in Cyprus, especially with the Anastasiades – DISY government, which governs with the aim of serving the interests of big capital and not society.
AKEL addresses a call for vigilance and struggle so that the burdens of the crisis are will not once again be shifted on the workers, households, small businesses and the young generation of our country. We call on the workers to respond with their weapons and shield: with the trade union organization in every workplace, with collective assertions and with struggles. AKEL’s proposals for the safeguarding of collective agreements through legislation to cover all working people with even minimal terms of work, to combat false self-employment and the purchase of services are now even more imperative. AKEL assures that it will continue, both inside and outside the House of Representatives to struggle to defend people’s gains, for the working people’s just cause and their rights, of those who really drive the economy and produce the wealth.
This year, the pandemic prevents the holding of the May Day mass rallies throughout Cyprus. However, the militant message of May Day can’t be suspended. We call on the working people of our country to respond to the call issued by the Pancyprian Federation of Labour (PEO) and on the 1st of Day to hang the Red flag of workers and their struggles on their balcony.
Long live Workers May Day!
