The head of the Central Committee of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoubas, at the beginning of his speech in Parliament today on the bill of the Ministry of the Environment, referred to what was said in today’s cabinet about the new way of calculating the minimum wage and emphasized that “of course, we did not hear something we didn’t know. After all, this is a direction of the EU and in essence it is a perpetuation of the memorandum laws of all of you, ND, PASOK, “all” SYRIZA, including the “New Left”, which abolished the collective negotiations for the calculation of the minimum wage”.

He noted that the government “defiantly tries to present every new anti-labor reform as supposedly beneficial to workers.”

“The experience so far from the years when the minimum wage is determined by government decision, after a seven-year freeze, has proven that any increases given are dissipated at the same time and more so due to inflation,” he noted.

He said that the government’s criteria are “”as long as the economy can withstand”, that is, as long as the capitalist profitability of this economy is not threatened”.

“You have forbidden workers to bargain collectively with employers, setting as a criterion their own needs based on the objective possibilities offered by our time,” he said addressing the government and added:

“Now with the algorithm you are trying to give an appearance of objectivity and science even to starvation wages. When the workers complain you will tell them “what do we have to do with it? The algorithm took it out…”.

D. Koutsoumbas said that “too many branches are already on strike and the pan-Hellenic general strike is being prepared on November 20, where one of the main demands is to resume collective negotiations”.

He emphasized that the government “is in complete opposition to the claims and demands of the workers of the whole country”, adding “don’t tell you that you will also call them “science deniers”, you are capable of everything”.

“As for the assurances that the minimum wage reduction will be prohibited, don’t even swear. When you were to blame the previous great crisis on workers, you were fine to cut the minimum wage overnight by 22% and by 32% for young people. The then Minister of Labor, Mr. Vroutsis, should remember something, of course the new convenient opposition of PASOK should remember something, since it co-governed with the ND and the far-right LAOS of Karatzaferis” he added.

“We say new convenient opposition”, he then explained, “because the effort of publishing centers, television channels, polling companies to “push” it is “eye-catching”. As if they were in agreement, in fact, with Mr. Mitsotakis who appeared in the Parliament last week to anoint PASOK and Mr. Androulakis as his convenient interlocutor and in fact in the position of the official opposition, due to poll deterioration of SYRIZA, its other pole of social democracy”.

“O tempora! O mores!, new times, new morals” he said characteristically and added:

“But the essence does not change. Both SYRIZA and PASOK remain convenient opponents of the ND also on the crucial issue of their stance on the minimum wage. The result of their governments’ policies is the fact that the average wage, which is what we should be most concerned about, is now 14% lower than in 2011. But this is your strategy dictated by the interests of big business groups. It is the strengthening of the general trend of reducing wages to increase the profitability of the few” he added.

He said that “this is why you refuse to enter into mandatory Collective Agreements, such as the builders’ and the Shipbuilding Zone’s which guarantee large increases in wages and 7-5-35, contracts that have made your labor laws a rag paper. That is why the Ministry of Labor has made mandatory only 2 sectoral nationwide contracts out of the 8 that have been signed. Such downhill. And then by maintaining this whole reactionary arsenal you lie that you support the policy of collective bargaining. This is how you reached 70% of workers living on less than 900 euros per month. And we don’t need to say how much higher the cost of living is.”

D. Koutsoubas spoke of “normal impoverishment of workers that continues even though we are in conditions of capitalist recovery” noting also that the popular strata are additionally burdened with exorbitant taxes.

“And the prime minister really has a lot of audacity to talk about a “tax reduction policy”, as he did the day before yesterday at the AADE. Based on your numbers, 2024 is expected to close with VAT receipts exceeding 25 billion euros, up from 23.4 billion last year and 18.6 billion in 2022. In these indirect – and more unfair – taxes are added and the approximately 7 billion from Special Consumption Taxes.

And don’t tell us that this rise in income reflects popular prosperity and greater consumption. Because the truth is that the percentage of indirect taxes to GDP, from 12.8% in 2012, reached 19.4% in 2022 and is constantly rising. Robbery is normal and nothing else” he noted and added concluding:

“So what tax cut are you talking about? Unless you mean the shipowners, the bankers, the banks and the rest, which you are obviously expressing politically. They actually. They pay virtually nothing compared to what they earn.

Why, for the sake of the people, do you stubbornly refuse to abolish or even reduce the exorbitant indirect taxes on food, energy and other types of general consumer consumption, as we have suggested over and over again here and as the whole groaning world is asking for out; Really, where does all this money go? Because no schools are built, no hospitals, no better salaries and pensions are given.

Of course, many of these taxes, to move on to the topic we are discussing today, also aim to finance the goals of the National Energy and Climate Plan. In short, they end up in the pockets of Energy groups for their own exclusively profitable investments”.