Things look bad for the Greek private sector, in fact for all working Greeks, if we believe the leakages to the Greek press by several government sources concerning the progress of the11.5-billion-euro package of austerity measures. What we have been hearing since yesterday watching the news on TV is this:
The Troika seems willing to step back on some of its demanded measure, the Troika is not so uncompromising as before, the Troika this… the Troika that…
In real life, this “reasonable” attitude of the Troika allegedly translates into: increasing of the retirement age to one or two years (66-67), even more cuts for the health care and the defense spending, more cuts for municipalities and a thorough administrative reform.
The deal the Greek government has apparently stroke is to trade the retirement age increase and deeper cuts in helath care in order to avoid lay offs in the public sector and the so-called “Labour Middle Ages” with increasiing of working hours, further cut the minimum wages and completely eliminate any labour rights -which in fact have disappeared from the life of the private sector anyway.
In order to ‘save’ some thousands of excessive civil servants, all Greeks will have to pay the price.
But in the last decades, the civil servants were hired from the pool of voters of the two big parties. Their official number is some 700,000 people. They are as many as the long-time jobless in the private sector , who have absolute zero income when their unemployment allowance of 460-360 euro ends after 12 months.
Samaras government partners Venizelos (PASOK) and Kouvelis (Democratic Left) made their point very clear after the meeting of government party leaders on Wednesday.
They said there were ‘red lines’ that cannot be crossed and that these were the lay-0ffs in the public sector.
I do not know how much of this political games that save the public sector but leave aside the public sector are true.
Fact is the talks between the Greeks and the Troika have not complete yet, Yiannis Stournaras will go to Eurogroup meeting tomorrow, Friday in Nicosia/Cyprus and try to convince Greece’s partners and lenders that we were on the right path and that the agreement will be closed next week.
Next week we will also know how big the measures-tsunami be for the next two years.
PS I’ve been writing about it since quite some weeks. Apologies. But I am angry again.
That’s good news! Venizelos and Kouvelis are fighting the righteous battle for all the Greek people. Because real REAL Greeks have jobs for life and are not those losers who are out of a job now for one and two years and keep on pretending to the taxman that they have no income. HA… and HA again. These gentlemen will show them!
A good friend of mine lost his (dare I say it?) *whispers* private sector job at an international bank */whispers* two years ago. He and his family have been living off their savings, while he has been doing everything to get another job. Even has traveled abroad to find something to earn a living and will leave again in a couple of weeks.
But, as he still has his own home, his SUV in the driveway and some other stuff from the ‘good times’ the tax office is calculating a fictitious income over the last two years and is taxing him accordingly… Guess more and more people will run in this nice new tax trap.
But I guess he is just one of the victims of that just war to keep the real REAL Greeks in their job for live.
And it’s a bloody lie that there is a split in this society. There is clearly not. Because the real REAL Greeks have a all a job. And the others just do not count.
Venizelos and Kouvelis are doing what everybody who is given power instead of responsibility does. They protect their power base.
The REAL problem here is that the likes of Venizelos and Kouvelis and Samaras and all the other tulips do not have any responsibilities because they are not held to account. Not so long ago I left a comment with some of the Samaras pre-election promises. Has anybody bothered asking him why NONE of these have come to being? As long as that doesn’t happen, people will get a government of leeches instead of a government of leaders, and pay dearly for it.
The change has to come from the bottom up, it will never happen from the top down!