Amid Strikes, Greek Workers are Hurting | Greece

Amid Strikes, Greek Workers are Hurting
Andy Dabilis

Anger over an onslaught of pay cuts, tax hikes, slashed pensions, layoffs and an uncertain future brought thousands of Greeks to the streets of the city's capital on Wednesday (October 5th), and led to a 24-hour general strike -- halting transportation, international flights and trains, closing tax offices and hospitals.

The country's main labour unions, ADEDY and GSEE, which represent 2.5 million workers, drove the protests.

The socialist PASOK government of Prime Minister George Papandreou, at the order of the EU-IMF-ECB troika, has implemented waves of austerity measures, and needs the next installment of 8 billion euros or will run out of money in mid-November.

Members of the eurozone postponed releasing the next tranche until Greece implements reforms -- including privatisation of state-owned entities and the sale or lease of state properties -- to raise 50 billion more euros.

The signs of austerity are everywhere, especially in downtown Athens, and are spreading to its neighbourhoods. Real beggars are on the streets, joining the Roma and scam artists; restaurants reducing prices for coffee; forlorn banners reading Enoikiazetai (For Rent) plastered on grimy windows.

Ioanna Ramou, a Greek high school teacher entering her 30th year of service, has had her pay cut again as part of the current measures.

"They caused this mess and they're making us pay for it," she told SETimes, referring to the administrations that have created a staggering debt of nearly $460 billion in a country of 11 million people.

Greece confirmed its economy is expected to contract by 2.5% in 2012 -- its fourth consecutive year of contraction -- raising the country's jobless rate, according to its 2012 draft budget.

Despite the cuts, however, Ramou said she is afraid of being put into a labour reserve pool of 30,000 workers who will be laid off at 60% pay and then probably fired in a year. She also doubts she will be paid a lump retirement sum of 50,000 euros that was gradually taken from her salary over three decades.

"That's money I will never get that they pocketed," she said of a government that protesters have denounced as thieves.

Ramou's plight is shared by at least 780,000 public workers -- big pay cuts and big tax hikes demanded by the EU-IMF-ECB troika in return for the bailout.

Compounding the problem is a lack of sympathy for public workers who've often been characterised as lazy and inefficient in a hugely redundant workforce of people hired via political favours. Ramou said she knows many people like herself who take their jobs seriously and are suffering.

Panayitos Ziogos, 49, a postal worker, says the measures are unfair because they don't fully include the rich and Greece's political elite.

"We're not responsible for all that happened. The politicians … told us lies. They have the responsibility for what happened," he told SETimes.

Ziogos says his salary has been cut by 3,000 euros a year, including big reductions in the annual two-month bonuses Greek workers had been given for years. "I am very angry. These politicians have to be gone."

Greece also has scores of thousands of contract workers without benefits, working for little in hopes of one day landing a coveted once-upon-a-time lifetime job guarantee, which are now disappearing. The government plans to sack perhaps 20% of the workforce over the next four years.

Even Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos, who said he faced selling real estate to pay the new property tax, admitted Greeks' pain threshold is being tested. "I think that the tax-paying limits of Greek society have been exhausted," he told Mega TV. "But I think that we should act on the other side of the problem, which is spending."

Ramou said she's stopped looking at the news any more because it's all bad. "I feel frustrated, kind of hollow and deceived and disillusioned," she said.

- Provided by Southeast European Times