MAY DAY 2012: ETHIOPIAN WORKERS SUFFER BEYOND GRIEF

May 1/2012

Ethiopian workers got the right to get organized and to observe May Day after paying sacrifice of big proportions—workers leaders like Abera Gemu, Markos Hagos and others- were killed by repressive regimes. We also remember a particular May Day during the previous totalitarian regime during which no less than 1,200 EPRP members and supporters were slaughtered all over Addis Abeba in a single day.

The plight of Ethiopian workers has not been as horrible as it is now under the ethnic based Meles regime. To begin with, the regime dissolved the trade union organization of the workers and set up its own satellite group after taking repressive actions against the leaders of the workers. It then proceeded to divide the workers along ethnic lines and decreed a repressive labor law that stands against the rights and interest of the workers at large. The right to strike of workers is curtailed practically and the workers have been left to the mercy of foreign companies that are engaged in land grab and plunder of Ethiopia’s resources. Some who lost their land by force when engaged as farm workers are paid low salaries, according to the World Bank standards for such countries. At one point, the regime even made it legal for the Chinese employers to beat up any Ethiopian worker deemed “lazy” by the modern slave drivers from the East.

Galloping inflation, a failed economic policy, rampant corruption have all made the lot of workers worse than ever before. Workers are starving; workers are impoverished as a new rich clique (predominantly from one ethnic group) with no scruples and morality engages in a cruel exploitation of workers. The cost of living is so expensive that the three meals a day promised by the dictator has become a mirage for millions. Women workers do not enjoy equal pay rights and many are exported to modern say slavery. It is safe to say that the worst country for a worker to live in is present day Ethiopia. This is why the EPRP calls on the workers of Ethiopia to organize themselves and rise up to defend their rights and to launch the popular struggle and uprising that the country is in dire need of.

Victory to the struggle of the working people of Ethiopia!!