workingclasshistory:

On this day, 22 December 2011, in Athens, the workers at Elefterotypia, Greece’s second-biggest daily paper, walked out on an indefinite strike in protest against not having been paid since August. After several weeks, the 870 men and women working at the firm, including cleaners, journalists, print workers and more, decided collectively to launch their own, self-managed newspaper, The Workers of Elefterotypia. With the new paper, the strikers hoped to raise funds to finance their strike, and also give a voice to all workers fighting against austerity. When the owners of Elefterotypia got wind of the plan they cut off heat at their office, shut down their electronic publishing system and locked out the strikers to prevent them from using any of their facilities. But in spite of this the workers still managed to get out their first issue and outsell every other paper in Greece. To coordinate their struggle, the workers organised regular mass assemblies with 150-550 people in attendance, where they not only decided what to do, but also discussed politics and their hopes for the future. When asked what she had learned from participating in the self-managed newspaper, one worker told an interviewer: “We are capable of making all of our decisions ourselves. We proved that we can run the newspaper without our bosses, in a democratic way. This entire experience is a new process in Greece. Before, we would vote for a trade union leadership every two years and leave all the decisions up to them. Now we know we can take our lives into our own hands.”
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