The country is expected to be brought to a halt today when employees in both the public and private sector down tools to protest against yet more spending cuts and tax rises. “The winter is going to be explosive and this will mark the beginning,” said Grigoris Kalomoiris, a leading member of the civil servants’ union Adedy.
“When the average wage has already been cut by 30%, when salaries are already unacceptably low, when the social security system is at risk of collapse, we cannot sit still,” he said.
Workers in schools, hospitals, banks, museums, archaeological sites, pharmacies and public services indicated that they will take part in the 24-hour walkout bringing the country to a hault. Some domestic flights will also be disrupted, ferries stuck in ports.News broadcasts stopped as staff walked off.
“This is a government under dual pressure from creditors above and the people below and our rage will be relentless. It will know no bounds”, Petros Constantinou, a prominent member of the anti-capitalist group Antarsya told the Guardian.
In a first for any sitting government, Syriza also threw its weight behind the strike exhorting Greeks to take part in the protest. The appeal – issued by the party’s labour policy division and urging mass participation “against the neoliberal policies and the blackmail from financial and political centres within and outside Greece” – provoked derision and howls of protest before the walkout had even begun. But leading Syriza figures insisted that the party continued to see itself as being true to its leftist ideology. “We agreed to take these measures under pressure,” the Syriza MP Christos Simorelis told local TV. “In Syriza we continue to see the party as one thing, the government another.”
PM Tsipras has already pushed one multi-bill of reforms through parliament. A second, viewed as key to unlocking €10bn for the recapitalisation of banks – which will further slash pensions and freeze wages – is due to be passed in the coming weeks.
Greece may not face default or eurozone exit as it did this summer but the crisis is far from over.
The prospect of home repossessions for Greeks who fall foul of mortgage repayments will add an incendiary element to a climate already at boiling point.
“Syriza may now be trying to save its soul but it has gone back on all its promises,” said Kalomoiris, a life-long leftist who joined a rebel group, Popular Unity, formed by Syriza dissidents when Tsipras signed up to the bailout in July.
“In this country a graduate starts off in the public sector with a salary of €775 a month, or €9,300 a year, and we are being told that wages will be frozen for the next decade and that every tax imaginable will be increased. It has got to the point where a social explosion is inevitable and it will come sooner rather than later.”
