Brussels, 29/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 29 January, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) criticised the Greek government hard for requisitioning the Athens metro because it wanted to put an end to a strike. The appeal to legislation on civil requisition - which has “virtually never been referred to since the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974” - to carry out austerity measures “is unacceptable”, the ETUC said.
The Greek metro strike. The Greek government took this decision on Thursday 24 January - the eighth day of the strike. The move was judged “illegal and abusive” by the Greek justice, and “corporatist” by the Greek minister for development, Costis Kadzidakis. The enormous problems in the flow of traffic on the roads, which was caused by the strike in Athens, seems to have pushed the Greek government to call upon exceptional legislation that until then had been little used. The requisition of the Athens metro, which at the same time involves the dismissal of the strikers, provoked an outcry of protest from the Greek unions. Spontaneous action against this measure also spread to other public transport sectors.
The Greek unions are opposed to the general reduction in salaries that the government wants to generalise in all public sectors. This is a measure that cannot be imposed and must be negotiated because salary levels are guaranteed by the existence of collective conventions, according to one of the Greek unions. However, in the view of the prime minister, Antonis Samaras, all the Greek people must make “enormous efforts” and “no exception” can be tolerated, he said, referring to the salaries of the public company which manages the metro in Athens.
Unemployment will continue to grow. On Tuesday 29 January, Dimitris Kremastinos (from the Panhellenic Socialist Movement - PASOK) who is the leader of the Greek Parliament's social affairs committee, was invited to the European Parliament as part of the parliamentary week on the European semester for coordinating economic policies. Kremastinos said that the point that is of most concern today in Greece is not the level of unemployment (26%) - which is already the second highest in the EU after Spain (26.6%) - but the trend of this rate not ceasing to rise for two years. In his view, this is one of the consequences of a policy that marries austerity with heavy taxation. Unemployment will continue to rise because we are far from stabilisation, he said. (JK/transl.fl)