Letter from the Piraeus Dockers’ Union ENEDEP to Greek teachers and students

“Dear teachers, parents and students,

You may be wondering who we are and why we are sending you this letter. We are workers at Piers II and III of the Port of Piraeus (COSCO/PCT/Dport). We are members of ENEDEP (Union of Container Handling Workers at the Piers of Piraeus).

You may have heard of us through the struggles we organise for health and safety measures in the workplace, as we have suffered dozens of workplace accidents.

You may have heard of us when we took the lead in demanding that the deadly storage tanks be moved away from our neighbourhoods and schools. You may have heard of us when we prevented bullets destined for the bodies of Palestinians from being loaded onto ships.

We may even have met, as many of us are parents whose children attend schools in Piraeus. In any case, we face the same daily hardships.

We are writing to all of you to share our news and excitement, because something truly unprecedented will happen on 30 October! We are organising the largest International Day of Strike Action by dockers, under the slogan “We dockers do not work for war”. Tens of thousands of dockers, in over 100 ports across four continents, are uniting and fighting together.

We started with 45 ports, and in less than a month we reached 100! Because we want ports to serve the peoples and peace, rather than act as bases for transporting weapons.

In Greece, France, Turkey, Italy, India, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Croatia, Cyprus, Morocco, Montenegro, Portugal, Mexico, Slovenia, Sweden and the United States, we port workers will spread the message everywhere, through actions and strikes, that we, the peoples, have nothing to divide us.

Because workers work hard, yet go hungry and cold, unable to educate their children or care for their elderly. Everywhere, workers toil so that a handful of exploiters can profit.

Because now they want workers to work for war, preparing them to fight in a war that is not their own.

That is why we dockers across the world declare that our hands may be blackened by the grease and oil of our work, but they will not be stained with the blood of the peoples on any imperialist front. We will not become complicit in the crime that has kindergarten children reenacting a funeral as they play in a shelter for displaced people in Gaza. We will not become accomplices in the murder of 170 schoolgirls at a school in Iran by US–Israeli bombing.

So we are reaching out to share our message with you and ask you to send us your own messages in return.

Every message of solidarity written by children’s hands can fill a docker in San Francisco with hope.

Every drawing from a primary school in Perama can touch a young man working at the port of Kolkata.

Every image of your mobilisations can light up the eyes of a worker in Málaga.

Every classroom discussion led by a teacher can give courage to an older docker in Antalya.

All these things together can fill us with pride: your parents, the dockers of Piraeus, and those of Alexandroupoli, Kavala, Thessaloniki, Igoumenitsa, Patras, Elefsina, Lavrio, Rafina, Heraklion and Volos.

Proud of our children, alongside whom we fight life’s battles. Proud of their teachers, who teach them to live with their heads held high.

So that the message rings out loud in our classrooms too: dockers do not work for war. They fight for ports of peace.”