The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-08-15
HEAVY PRISON
TERMS GIVEN TO
CREEK STRIKERS
Anti ascisti Spirit Is
Growing

ATHENS, Aug. 14.-Thirty work
ers arrested during the recent af-
fair at the Piraeus fertilizer works
have been tried and eleven sentenced
to 16 months with hard labor. The
charge was resistance against the
state authorities and assault against
police officials, but this charge had
to be dropped as it was shown that
the injuries of the police officers
had been caused by the bullets of
the factory guards and not the
strikers.
The strikers were sentenced in
spite of this evidence on other
charges.
ATHENS, Aug. 14.-In the
chemical industries discomfort has
been great for a long time. The
majority of the operatives in the
chemical works of Kanapoulos
Chiefly fertilizer mills in the Pr
aeus) laid down work. Beside the
demand of better wages and work
ing conditions the main reason for
the strike is the terroristic enforce
ment of an open-shop policy and the
persecution of organized workers by
the employers.
The chemical magnates of Greece
allow no organized men in their
works, and specially no men organ
lied in the revolutionary unions.
This attitude of the fertilizer manu-
facturers is easily explained by the
fact that their plants are destined
to play a most important part in
case of war.
The owners maintain special armed
guards to enforce their wishes and
the strikers have had occasion to
convince themselves of the practical
value of these private troops on the
very first day of the strike. When
the workers decided to stop work,
the owners guards first attempted to
prevent them from leaving the
plant. They blocked the doors and
allowed no one out. The majority
of the workers succeeded, however,
in leaving through an unguarded
exit and tried to liberate their COM
rades held back on the premises by
the armed guards. These, however,
received the workers with a volley
of rifle-fire and mills bombs. The
guards occupied the whole plant in
a regularly military fashion and in
a few hours the plant was turned
into a regular battlefield. When
the police arrived on the scene the
situation was so doubtful that the
commanding officer was forced to
promise that the workers imprisoned
in the factory would be released.
The employers were not satisfied,
however. They needed bloodshed in
order to COW the workers. Suddenly
and without the least provocation
the police began to fire at the crowd
of strikers. The owners guards, en-
couraged by this conduct of the
police, also attacked the strikers.
One of the managers who was also
the commander of the troop threw
mills bombs at the strikers.
This was the signal for a general
onslaught. They were shot at I'M
till it was too dark to see wherever
they showed themselves and chased
to their lodgings. Sixteen seriously
injured and numerous arrests are
the results of this brutal outrage of
the state police and the private gun
men.
There is every reason to suppose
that two workers of the number de-
tanned in the factory have been
murdered by the thugs. They are
and nobody knows what be-
came of them.
The Red Aid of Greece imme-
diately organized a campaign of as
sistance for the courageous strikers
who continue their fight and ap-
peals to all foreign anti-F Fascist or
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