George Mavrikos

George Mavrikos (born 1950) was the General Secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in Athens, Greece.

Political and trade union action In Athens, his first job was as an agricultural worker in the “Ponirakis” greenhouses while he was still a student.

While he was an evening student at the “Omiros” technical school in N. Ionia, he worked for a short time as a loader at the shipyards of the port city Skaramagas and at the “Anoxal” metal factory.

He then worked in the textile industry in large factories, such as the German company “Hudson” from which he was dismissed for his trade union activity.

He worked as a commercial employee for four years in a central commercial store in Athens, then in Thessaloniki and Larissa; for 11 years he worked in a large company of tractors and agricultural machinery, while during the same period, as a worker student, he studied at the Faculty of Law of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

During the 7 years of dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974) he was fired twice from his work in textile factories due to his trade union and political action.

In 1982 he was elected as organizational secretary of the Athens Labor Center (EKA), which was and is the largest Departmental Union in Greece.

The delegates of the 18th World Trade Union Congress, held in May 2022, in Rome, as a sign of honor for his contribution, declared him Honorary President of the WFTU.

In the years 2006-2022, he was accredited permanent representative of the WFTU to the UN, in New York and to the ILO, in Geneva, where he addressed the annual Plenary Session sixteen times.

Written work The labor union movement 1918-1948: Two lines in constant confrontation, Modern Era Publications, Athens, 2001, 4th edition.

Critical Notes on the Hisory of the World Trade Union Movement: Issues of tactics and strategy, published by the International Workers' Institute (IWI), 2024.