The powerful workers union GENOP-PEH at Greece’s Public Power Corporation (PPC) have announced to launch rolling 48-hour strikes that will start as of 00:01 Monday, April 23rd 2018. The union will launch also a 3-hour work stoppage on Friday, Apr 20, and a protest outside the PPC headquarters in downtown Athens. The work stoppage will be held from 07:00 am until 10:00 am.
In a list of demands sent to the PPC management,the union demands:
- the halting of the sale of lignite plants
- return of 17% PPC stake from the Greek Privatization Fund HRASF to the state
- signing of a collective labor agreement
- hiring of additional personnel
The GENOP-DEH mobilization comes after the government submitted a bill on coal-fired plants sale on Wednesday.
The union and the government is on collision course and I cannot tell whether the fight will cause also power outages.
The Greek government has agreed with its foreign creditors that Public Power Corp. (PPC), which is 51 percent state-owned, will sell plants equal to about 40 percent of its coal-fired capacity this year.
Greece, which is implementing reforms in exchange for loans from the European Union, will divest the capacity to comply with a European court ruling which said that PPC had abused its dominant position in the coal market.
The draft legislation, which says PPC must launch an international tender by May 31, was submitted to parliament after EU antitrust regulators approved Greek measures to open up the coal market on Tuesday.
