Greek public sector workers launched their first nationwide walkout after the summer lull yesterday to protest against planned job cuts prescribed by the country's European Union and IMF lenders.
Teachers, doctors and municipal workers joined the 24 hour strike by the country's biggest public sector union ADEDY, which shut state schools, left hospitals operating on emergency staff and briefly disrupted trolley bus services.
Holding banners that read "No to firings!" and "EU, IMF out!" dozens of protesters gathered outside a court that was due to deliver its verdict on whether hundreds of laid-off public sector cleaning ladies should be re-hired.
The decision was postponed to February next year.
"We will continue our struggle and escalate our action," ADEDY said in a statement, demanding that all public sector workers who have been fired get their jobs back.
The strike comes as Prime Minister Antonis Samaras visits Germany, Greece's biggest creditor, for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Athens, which has been bailed out by the EU and IMF to the tune of more than 240 billion euros in aid since 2010, is expected to begin negotiating some form of debt relief by the end of the year.
Bailouts of the Greek economy have come at the price of wage cuts and tax rises that have driven up unemployment to more than double the euro zone average and worsened a six-year recession.
As part of the bailout, Greece must adjust wages in its public sector and dismiss workers based on performance, something which labour unions oppose.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article