Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Athens on July 16 during a 24-hour general strike called by the country’s two largest labor unions, ADEDY representing public workers and GSEE representing private workers.
It came a day ahead of a scheduled vote in Parliament on a package of more than 100 reforms, key among them a plan to shed 15,000 jobs by the end of 2014 and put another 12,500 in an involuntary transfer program in which they would get 75 percent of their already reduced pay for up to eight months and likely then fired.
Mayors across the country shut down services from July 15-17 and workers most likely to be affected: municipal police and teachers among them, carried signs with slogans such as “No Layoffs,” but the demonstrations were low-key and mostly muted and wound up early in a sign that Greeks have perhaps surrendered to their fate.
Hundreds of similar protests over the last three years against austerity measures have done nothing to prevent successive governments from going ahead with pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions on the orders of international lenders putting up $325 billion in two bailouts.
While Greeks blamed the New Democracy Conservatives and PASOK Socialists for imposing the measures, the two parties blamed for creating the crisis by packing public payrolls with hundreds of thousands of needless workers are now charged with firing the people they hired while sharing an uneasy coalition.
“We urge MPs not to vote for the bill because it would be a tragic mistake,” Nasilis Polymeropoulos, Vice President of ADEDY said in his statement.”It is tragic mistake to the employees, the local government and the public administration, but especially against our dignity,” he added.
“The dilemma of the Greek MPs is whether they will align with the Memorandums or with the people,” said GSEE General Secretary Nikos Kioutsoukis. A group of lawmakers from the major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) carried banners with the slogan Fire the Government.
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