Syros strike was a workers' strike in

Syros Syros ( ), also known as Siros or Syra, is a Greece, Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is south-east of Athens. The area of the island is and at the 2021 census it had 21,124 inhabitants. The largest towns are Ermoupoli, Ano S ...

Cyclades The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate i ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. It started in early 1879, mobilized workers of different industries and ended with the satisfaction of the strikers' demands after violent clashes between the strikers and the police.

Background

Syros was since the proclamation of an independent Greek state a place of thriving commercial and maritime activity. During the 1870s there already existed a shipyard and tanning industries employing around 1500 and 500 workers respectively. In

Ermoupoli Ermoupoli (), also known by the formal older name Ermoupolis or Hermoupolis ( < "Town of Hermes"), is a town and former Communities and Municipalities of Greece, municipality on the island of Syros, in the Cyclades, Greece. Since the 2011 loca ...

, the capital of Syros, the first workers' union in Greece was founded named ''Brotherhood of the carpenters of Syros shipyards'' (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: ''Αδελφικός Σύλλογος Ξυλουργών του Ναυπηγείου Σύρου''). The union was influenced by some

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

tendencies of the era, with reports of an "

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

workers' cycle". A monetary crisis had practically reduced the value of the, already low, workers' wages and the working conditions included workdays of more than 12 hours and an extra 2-hour unpaid Sunday work.

The strike

On February 14, the shipwrights started their strike, with the tanning workers joining them on February 19 demanding wage increases, reduction of working hours and abolition of the mandatory unpaid Sunday work. The demonstrations led to violent clashes between the strikers on the one side and the police and strikebreakers on the other side. During these fights a police officer was hit in the head with a rock and died. The strikers' demands were eventually accepted and the strike ended.

Aftermath

After the strike ended, the strikers returned to their works and massive firings of strikers took place. The gap in workforce was filled with new workers for which the improvements in wages and labor hours gained from the first strike did not apply. This resulted in a new strike being called on February 27, demanding the rehiring of the fired workers, while also respecting the deal reached after the first strike. This strike lasted until July of the same year, without any positive outcome for the workers.

References

{{reflist 1879 in Greece Labor disputes in Greece 1879 labor disputes and strikes