Employers reportedly shot at migrant farm workers who demanded six months' back pay

[ВАЛТЕР]

A worrying incident in Greece. Thought I would share it with the forum.

http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.society&id=687



http://www.enetenglish.gr/resources/2013-04/handcuffs-reuters-thumb-medium.jpg (http://www.enetenglish.gr/resources/2013-04/handcuffs-reuters-thumb-large.jpg) Police investigating incident in which employers reportedly started shooting at immigrant farm workers in Nea Manolada (Reuters)

An employer reportedly opened fire against a large group of about 200 Bangladeshi immigrant farm workers in Nea Manolada, on the outskirts of Ileia in the Peloponnese, on Thursday. The immigrant workers had reportedly gathered to demand six-months’ worth of unpaid wages.
Police reported that one of at least three farmers opened fire, injuring at least 20 migrant workers. One farmer armed with a hunting rifle was reportedly arrested.
Several thousand migrant workers (many of them reportedly undocumented) are empoyed as strawberry pickers in the area.

This is not the first time that immigrants in Nea Manolada have protested against harsh working conditions.

In 2008, immigrant farm workers staged a two-day strike (delaying the shipments of strawberries by at least a few days) to protest against harsh working conditions. Their strike exposed slave wage exploitation, shocking living conditions and prejudice.

The government at the time responded to the strike by ordering labour inspectors to crack the whip on farmers exploiting migrant workers in Nea Manolada.

Despite the country’s soaring rate of unemployment, agriculture is heavily reliant on immigrant labour.

In 2009, two farmers in Manolada, alleged to have tied two Bangladeshi immigrants to a motorcycle and reportedly dragged them through a central square.

[Fourth Internationalist]

I'm surprised the government interfered in this. I'm sure in the future the government will say it's the employers 'right' to do this.

[ВАЛТЕР]

I believe we are going to see more and more such incidents as the crisis deepens. Remember the massacre of the S. African miners which took place about a year or so ago? How long can the working class take these sort of attacks? I would like to know what organizations, if any, are giving support to such workers. Maybe some of our Greek comrades can give us some insight into this event?

[Delenda Carthago]

THIS FUCKIN VILLAGE MAN! THIS MOTHERFUCKIN SHITHOLE VILLAGE.


Thats not the first time that this kind of shit happen, and no, it has nothing to do with the deepenth of crisis. This has to do with scumbags greek bosses, with their greek and albanian helpers taking as slaves the pakistani workers. Making them to work from sun to dawn for a piece of bread(literally) and then handing them to the cops.

Some years ago, PAME went there to assist some workers get their money from their bosses, which ended up in a 200 people fight, ie the vast majority of that fuckin village against PAME and the pakistanis.


If there is a God, when I wake up I will find that he stoke 10.000 lightnings to that fuckin village.




Tommorow, KKE calls for a demo in the village of that fuckin village. Expect the worst. I will do everything I can to go there.

[Delenda Carthago]

http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-lightbox/public/Media/20130417/manolada-traymaties.jpg?itok=4ieca9M7


I am ashamed to call myself greek...

[a_wild_MAGIKARP]

Disgusting. Bourgeois scum like this are the ones who need to be shot.

[Delenda Carthago]

And please, do humanity a favour: if you ever find strawberries from Manolada, please, please, please boycott them. Or even better, organise a boycott campaign in your country. I would gladfully help spreading the word. LET THEM DIE FROM STARVATION. The least dignified thing to do to them.

[Delenda Carthago]

http://www2.rizospastis.gr/getImage.do?size=medium&id=251436&format=.jpg


http://www1.rizospastis.gr/getImage.do?size=medium&id=211230&format=.jpg


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RmirV73lKCU/SChQgNcoqmI/AAAAAAAAAto/PW1SG19wsKc/s400/manolada%25202.jpg


http://www.rizospastis.gr/getImage.do?size=medium&id=211214&format=.jpg


The first picture is from the incident I mentioned before before the fight broke out(hence the chain on the block), the rest are from actions PAME has done afterwards.

[Delenda Carthago]

WcuBM23tQOg

TV channel report about the fight.

[Delenda Carthago]

The living conditions.




https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQk4z-W6dLdldhjzxSW0gvfQoId5RWfmHPFIGbZgRmGzhes6Zqj

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9p6DyLpbAw/T7SV6yDn1uI/AAAAAAAAB7A/8M_vrnHCFZw/s1600/241115-124656438_bd0017f18b_b.jpg


http://www.i-red.eu/resources/news-files/manwlada002.jpg


https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSvBRi30d_RdBBliMd3VVKNdkDEyRh7O VUfmPvDnK4AM_ttuxJ39w

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Cp9VSBUSMqo/SAc7BvdRHNI/AAAAAAAAARo/ICycJN19H0Y/s400/neaaaaaaaaa.jpg

[Delenda Carthago]

http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/533710_403844929714180_627714455_n.jpg



the scums that did it.

[slum]

despicable. thx for the background info, DC

[Comrade Nasser]

F***ing fascist racist pieces of shit. Feed him to the crows for all I care. F***ing scum with an ego and a ten foot pole up their asses. These men didn't have families you stupid pieces of shit!? Fuck you. Fuck Nikolaos Michaloliakos. F*** Scumfront. F*** Don Black. F*** you, and f*** Golden Dawn. If you admire Hitler so much why don't you just follow in his footsteps and off yourselves???? You're all f***ing cowards, that's what you are. You know it, and I know it.

[Brutus]

And yet nobody sees the needn for class war

[Delenda Carthago]

Left.gr, the portal of SYRIZA, just posted that they took the immigrant workers from the hospital, and drove them to the police station of the area because they didnt had the legal papers.

[Delenda Carthago]

vkCJnXMU9eM

video right after the shots.

[ВАЛТЕР]

I think it is time the working class in Greece (as well as everywhere) took weapons into their hands and fought back. Parliamentary politics have gone nowhere favorable for the people. It is time to take a revolutionary approach to change and stop playing these bourgeois parliamentary games.

[a_wild_MAGIKARP]

And yet nobody sees the needn for class war
It's unbelievable that there are still pacifists on the left after things like this happen.
Like people that say "oh we can't hurt capitalists or fight back, that would be simply barbaric" ...are you kidding me?!

[Delenda Carthago]

I think it is time the working class in Greece (as well as everywhere) took weapons into their hands and fought back. Parliamentary politics have gone nowhere favorable for the people. It is time to take a revolutionary approach to change and stop playing these bourgeois parliamentary games.
No, its not. We still have a long way to go. The working class in Greece still havent realise that it is a class and that it should start producing politics for itself. I remind you, last year, 95,5% of the people voted the package "capitalism, within EU, within eurozone".

[Delenda Carthago]

ruEnIQxHFN4

The demo of KKE in Manolada, with basic slogan "Greek and immigrant workers, same interests, same enemies".


Also, many small demos were done from PAME all around Athens and Greece.

ADNj19lK0jQ

Οther slogans that were shouted were:
"Workers rise up, now form a fist, destroy the mnemonioums and the bosses"
"The law is the workers interests, not the profits of the capitalists"

[Delenda Carthago]

Also, this intervention have happened outside of the Ministry of Labor, by some PAME syndicates leaderships.

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[Beeth]

And yet nobody sees the needn for class war

Race war dilutes class war. Unless people look at each other as people (rather than as members of certain nations, ethnic groups, etc.) class war will remain a pipe dream.

[Delenda Carthago]

I found this from 2008


Migrant workers in Greece wage historic strike



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by: Laura Petricola (http://www.peoplesworld.org/laura-petricola)
May 29 2008 tags: International (http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor/tag/International), Labor (http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor/tag/Labor)

ATHENS — Migrant workers laboring in the strawberry fields of Nea Manolada, in Greece’s southern Peloponnese region, where 90 percent of the country’s strawberry production is concentrated, waged a historic strike last month that will pave the way for immigrant workers in the country to battle for their rights, side by side with Greek workers. After a three-day strike April 18-20, the field laborers returned to work with a wage increase to 25-26 euros per day. Their wages had been 22-23 euros for a full workday. The strikers have vowed to continue their fight for a daily wage of 30 euros.

Though over 2,000 of the 2,500 agricultural laborers in Nea Manolada are undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania and other countries, they fought back against police terror and the vicious attacks of the large producers, demanding better working and living conditions as well as a higher wage. The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) has been in Manolada for the past year aiding migrant laborers to organize their struggle and to link these issues to wider workers’ struggles throughout Greece.

On May 11, PAME forces from all over Peloponnese and nearby islands mobilized in Manolada in a mass show of support for the field laborers. The rally’s theme was “Greek and Immigrant Workers United in Struggle!” Large landowners made determined efforts to turn Greek farmers against PAME and the strikers, claiming that immigrant labor costs Greeks their jobs.

Migrant agricultural laborers in Nea Manolada live and work in squalid conditions. They are forced to work every day, including Sunday. Lost days mean lost wages and the threat of firing. They harvest strawberries in greenhouses in 113 degrees Fahrenheit. There are no toilets at the work site; workers must use the fields. The only water supply comes from the pipes used to water the strawberries.

Many workers live in the greenhouses because they cannot afford rent elsewhere. They cover their makeshift beds of wood pallets with newspapers and rags. No running water, electricity or toilets are available. Those “lucky” enough to have housing live with 25 people or more sharing one toilet in abandoned village houses or warehouses where they pay up to 50 euro per month per person.

Workers must pay out of pocket for all medical care, to a government that refuses to grant free medical care to undocumented permanent immigrants. Yet they have many medical problems because of the exhausting work and the excessive use of pesticides and fungicides without protective equipment. Many workers are raising young children under such foul and desperate conditions.

The government refuses to guarantee the workers’ basic rights but instead does all it can to support the “right” of large landowners to extract the greatest maximum profit from them. Just half an hour of work represents the actual cost of labor on a given day; the other six and a half hours line the pockets of the boss. In clearer terms, on average a strawberry worker fills five crates per hour, with 10 boxes per crate. Each box is sold for roughly 3 euros. Do the math!

Given the profits involved, it is clear why strikers and members of PAME were under attack. From the very first day, strikers were terrorized by the bosses. During the strike’s second day, three of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) members present for support were attacked and wounded, while armed groups stormed the workers’ shanties. Threats and provocations continued into the third day while the police looked on.

On the third day, landowners agreed to increase wages and strikers agreed to go back to work, vowing to continue their struggle for a 30 euro daily wage. KKE is demanding that the Ministries of Labor and the Interior intervene, with no results as yet.

The strike shows migrants have power when that power is channeled into mass collective action. KKE proposes a framework of organization and struggle for the needs of migrants and their families including immediate legalization and equal rights in work, health care, education and social security.






http://www.peoplesworld.org/migrant-workers-in-greece-wage-historic-strike/

[tachosomoza]

Greece doesn't sound like a nice place to live.

[Solarstone]

These foreign workers had not been paid in six months according to what I've read. Now with the economy sinking in Europe, it will get worse.