With banners and anti-austerity slogans PAME-members of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) union settled in front of the Labour Ministry in Athens hindering representatives of Greece’s lenders to meet the minister. The meeting between Yiannis Vroutsis and the Troika was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. However the representatives of IMF, EU and ECB did not dare to come close to a building and try to break through a wall of protesting Greek Communists.
PAME banner: “TROIKA – IMF – ECB GET OUT OF HERE – GENERAL STRIKE”
Greek media claim that the Troika asked Vroutsis to meet them at Hilton Hotel where they reside when in Athens. But the Greek minister rejected this alternative meeting place, saying he wouldn’t leave the ministry in order to meet the Troika somewhere else.
PAME-members withdrew from the ministry entrance around 2:30 p.m. and the Troikans managed to meet Vroutsis a bit later.
Nevertheless, the protest staged by the Greek communists did not manage the inevitable: The further overthrown of Greek labour rights.
- possible raise of retirement age from 65 to 67 years old.
- Decrease notice time for lay-off from 6 down to 3 months
- Decrease of lay-off compensation by 50%
- Decreasing employees’ contributions to social security funds
- Increase of working days from 5 to 6
- Lowering the already lowered minimum wage (Febr 2011 it went down from 751 euro to 586 & 500 euro.
Target of the IMF is to bring down the minimum wage to levels of Portugal (566 euro) or to levels ot former East Europe.
Meanwhile, a Portugese friend emailed me yesterday:
“Did you hear about the latest austerity measures in Portugal? Workers who now pay 11% of their income for Social Security will have to pay 18%. that’s over 63% more and its being treated like a “tax” and not a contribution (extra money would have to go into the social security account and not to meet the deficit goal for the ‘troika’!!!”. Personally, if this measure is approved, my wage will go back to the values of 10 years ago. I will not be able to meet my financial compromises. I’m thinking I may have to look for work in another country, commit suicide or…”
PS And if we don’t die early, we will work for a piece of bread until we reach our grave. But only in case, we get a job. Then in Greece, every time you get a new job (in a supermarket) in a new profession (if you got engineering diploma), you’re considered as unskilled ‘newbie’ and get paid with the minimum wage…
BTW: 713.40 euro – more than a month’s salary – was spent for an interpreter hired to translate during the negotiations between Labour Minister and the Troika.
To find no more interpreters would be sweet.
Before talking to any Minister, The Troika members should be forced to talk to the people they are trying emasculate in every sense of the word.
Meanwhile, the expenses for the translator is only “normal”.
The Troika members are staying in the Hilton Hotel in Athens. 459€ a night, each…
Here’s another bit of news for the land of political “expenses”:
The Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, in existence for a year or so, and nothing to show for it, has spent a whopping 6.9 million € of Greek tax payers money on wages and expenses. The “expenses” amount to 5.5 million €, paid to “consultants”. Is there anybody out there who can explain who these very expensive “consultants” are, how much they each got, what their relationship, if any, is to Greek or EU politicians past and present, and what their relationship, if any, to political parties inside or outside Greece is?
So far, 2 CEO’s of the H.R.A.D.F. resigned, and one EU appointed “observer” resigned after being implemented in a massive real estate fraud in her home country Slovakia. Otherwise, nothing to report…
expenses are expensive, of course lol
Read that the retirement age should go to 66. But apart from that, one of the main reasons is that targets are not met because too many ‘special cases’ can still go on pension way before anybody else.
Lay-off notice of 3 months is nothing special in a lot of countries. In my other country this time is calculated by the years you have worked. When you just worked for a year it is a month, but if you have worked 20 years it is almost a year.
Same goes for the compensations when fired. If you just worked a short stint, you get nothing. If you worked 20 or 30 years there is a formula that will give you something like a years worth of compensation.
Same goes for your sallary. If you start in a new job your work experience up to that date will count into which salary scale you will start at your new job.
Reading things like that makes me more and more sure that Greeks should demand a total overhaul of their state. Because in most cases they pay far more than anybody in ‘rich’ countries, but get far less in return.
The only thing I am still totally puzzled about is that minimum wage… I can’t get clear what the deal with that is. But I constantly have the creeping suspicion that other things are going on then just some butchering of the minimum wage to 500 euro…
Antonis, these new ‘flexible’ labour relations will be applied independantly of how many years you have worked. what’s the question about the minimum wage?
what I know from the labour market (from friends’ children) is that hardly anyone under 30 has a full time job: part-timers with 200-300 euro max., no insurance and very short work contracts- one month, max.3 months.
So, everybody (?) is already working flexible. So what’s the big deal one might think… But seriously: We all know that this is only for all the non-state and sub-state workers. And those who work for the state despite having not been payed for sometimes up to two years are doing that because they still believe in that past ‘dream’ of landing that cosy job for life…
I have never seen people work so hard as the self-employed and workers in small businesses here in Greece. For them there are no 5-day working weeks. They are still working at 11 at night and Sunday is just a day to do some more work after lunch.
And minimum wages have never been anything more worth than the paper they were written on.
But the Unions are way to busy defending the rights of the already privileged. And that includes themselves, of course! They have been busy fighting the fights against part-time jobs. Be it through work-agencies or other means. But in the mean time we all know an awful lot of people who have/had indeed just jobs for a couple of hours and are working 2 or 3 jobs to just scrape by.
Tomorrow the local governments are on strike again. Well, at least in the morning. From 1 or 1.30 they are off to lunch like always and then off to do nothing or, as is the case around here, to work on the land that is officially not theirs, but their mothers, or daughters… Full time jobs, they call it.
Nothing is what it seems… That’s not a Greek myth, it’s the Greek enigma.
paraphrasing the tourism myth-slogan: Live your enigma in Greece!
I want to make jsut a small note.
Portuguese minimum salary/wage is not 566 euros but 485 euros without discounts.
With the new social security tax rate of 18%, the net salary will be 398 euros.
hey, but thats OK, our prime minister only wins 6850 euros per month
thanks, Mario! it’s the eurostat numbers – I suppose-, but they are slow in reflecting the real life as in Greece. 485? i see soon minimum wage in GR coming down to this level too – now 580 from 760 (Febr 2011).
Yes, I heard employees’constributions rise from 11% to 18%.
But your PM earns less than ours! I’ll call the Torik ain a minute.