JOINT DECLARATION GC TC TU 1 May 2019
PEO, DEV-IS, KTAMS, KTOS, KTOEOS, BES, KOOP-SEN, DAU-SEN
1st MAY 2019
The working people of Cyprus yet again honor International Workers’ May Day, the international day of struggle and solidarity of the working people.
We honor the pioneering heroes of the 1886 uprising in Chicago, which, through the sacrifices made, became a symbol of struggle for the international working class. Their visions remain timeless and serve as a beacon guiding working people’s struggles for work with rights, for peace and social justice.
We pay tribute to the pioneers of our country’s workers’ movement, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, who, through common fierce class struggles and in the spirit of internationalism and class solidarity, opened up new paths and achieved fundamental gains for the working class of Cyprus.
We express our international solidarity and join our forces with the struggles being waged by working people all over the world against fascism, racism and imperialist wars for peace, for equality, justice and labour and human rights.
We denounce the ongoing wars and interventions of the imperialists, which continue to represent a means of imposing the geostrategic and economic interests of the world’s dominant powers. In our volatile and troubled area, these interventions are causing deaths, provoking destruction and the uprooting of millions of people as refugees.
For the working people of Cyprus, International Workers’ Day is also a day for reaffirming our commitment to the struggle for the solution and reunification of our homeland and people.
We remain firmly committed to the goal of a bicommunal, bizonal federal solution for one state with a single sovereignty, a single citizenship, and a single international personality and with political equality of the two communities as described in relevant UN resolutions.
Bi-communal talks are the only way to reach an agreement between the two communities for a solution that will reunite Cyprus and render it a free, independent and demilitarized common homeland of all Cypriots.
After the talks had broken down at Crans Montana, the Cyprus problem finds itself in a barren stagnation which creates enormous dangers for the finalization of the partition of our island.
We urge the two leaders to rise to the occasion and proceed as soon as possible to the resumption of the negotiating procedure with the safeguarding of the convergences achieved so far within the framework put forth by the Secretary General of the UN Mr. Guterres at Crans Montana.
This year International Workers’ Day finds working people throughout the world facing the harsh consequences of the capitalist crisis and the attacks being waged on labour rights, confronted with the deterioration of social inequality and the destruction of the environment. Neoliberal austerity policies have impoverished the peoples and paved the way for racism, xenophobia and the rise of ultra-right fascist powers.
In our country, Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot working people are suffering from the consequences of neo-liberal policies, which further highlight the common class interests of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot workers and the need to intensify their struggles and solidarity between them
We call on the working people, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, to rally around the class-based trade union movement of our country and united to fight against the policies of austerity and deregulation of labour relations, against privatizations and the dismantling of the welfare state.
We call on the working people to develop together class struggles to defend the labour and social gains which the pioneering Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot trade unionists have bequeathed us.
– Together for the solution of reunification
– For work with rights.
– Long live the International Workers’ Day!
