Unemployment benefits and Christmas bonus have become the target of conservative new Democracy, Greece’s main opposition party, aspiring to come to power after the next parliamentary elections.
New Democracy sees the achievements of the working class struggle as counter-productive and claims that they create clientele relations between the state and the employees.
While citizens are waiting for the Easter bonus, ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said “Honestly, I do not want a society that depends on Christmas bonuses. Young Greeks should not wait for the Christmas bonus at the end of each year and turn into hostages of the clientele.”
So-called ‘neo-liberal’ Mitsotakis, whose whole family (late father, sister, nephew, himself) has been on the state payroll for decades as politicians by profession claimed that he wants “to focus on opportunities rather than benefits.”
The Christmas bonus which is paid by the employers and not the state is not the only problem of ND in a pure neo-liberal world vision with low salaries and no benefits or allowances.
In the same wavelength, a ND MEP candidate and chairman of ND Youth Organization ONNED attacked the “unemployment allowance” describing it as “counterproductive.”
“Many times it was preferable to subsidize unemployment rather than work, and for that hundreds of thousands of young people remain unemployed waiting for an unemployment allowance to come along and take 100 and 200 euros from grandmothers and grandparents to make ends meet. There is a labor middle age, and this situation becomes more attractive with unemployment allowance, when it comes to look for a job,” said Kostas Dervos.
He also claimed that “raising the minimum wage resulted in an increase of 6 euros for the worker and a burden of 70 euros for the employer.
Apart from the trouble in ND’s mind, the main opposition party wants Greece’s workers to return back to 1822.
The Law for Christmas and Easter bonus for private sector employees was adopted in 1851.
BTW: the unemployment benefit workers receive has been paid by them during their working life in the context of “social contributions.”
PS to hear such proposals by people who have been playing politics all their lives is a hubris. At least,
Million dollar bonuses to useless bankers (who ruin the economy (with their unlimited greed, risky gambling and disdain for society) are also very unproductive for the nation. It is obvious on whose side the ND stands.
actually it would be a huge improvement if we did indeed go back to the law as it was in 1822 (basically the last comprehensive edition of roman law, the ‘proxeiron nomwn’ of Armenopoyloy , often known as the ‘tetrabiblos’, which was used both in byzantium and the west (widely circulated in latin translation) until the 19th century, and remained
the basic law of the land in greece until the late 40s). it’d be vastly superior to the nightmare we have these days!