Gridlock in Athens as transport staff strike over pension reforms

18.02.2020 TAGS:Strike, Protest, Transport

Traffic was gridlocked in parts of Athens on Tuesday as transport workers joined a strike over planned pension reforms, while thousands marched peacefully through the city center demanding the draft law be scrapped.

With the subway, trains and public buses at a standstill, many commuters were forced to drive to work, leaving major traffic arteries into the sprawling city of almost four million blocked. Passenger ships remained docked at ports.

The one-day stoppage was convened by public sectors unions who are concerned the reforms will mean more cuts to pensions that have been progressively whittled away since Greece took its first financial bailout in 2010.

Marchers rallied outside parliament later on Tuesday, a day before a scheduled debate on the bill submitted by the conservative government that took office in July.

“It’s been chop job after chop job in the last [few] years. We are striking because we want pensions we can live on,” said Dimitris Volis, a steward at a coastal ferry company in Piraeus, the port that serves Athens.
Greece, which needed three international bailouts between 2010 and 2015, has cut state pensions several times in recent years to make the system viable.

The draft now pending legislative approval creates a digital social security registry and delinks pensions from earnings, introducing more flexibility for the self-employed over contributions.

Unions say the reforms are a thinly-disguised attempt by the governing conservatives to privatize pension funds, and accuse Greek politicians of reneging on a promise to rescind all bailout-mandated cuts.

“I’ve been working since I was 17, and they [the state] are telling me I won’t get a pension until 67. Will I endure this until then?” said Nectaria, 48, a single mother who works as a cleaner in a hospital.

Others had little sympathy for the strikers. “A strike has never accomplished anything,” said pensioner Dimitris Polychroniadis, angry that he had to pay for a taxi instead of taking public transport.

Greeks staged repeated strikes against austerity cuts during the debt crisis that erupted in late 2009. The country emerged from its third international bailout in 2018.

 

[Reuters] Online

Downtown Athens and Thessaloniki gridlocked by marches and transport strikes

NEWS 18.02.2020 

TAGS:Strike, Protest, Transport

Downtown Athens and Thessaloniki were turning into a motorist’s nightmare on Tuesday, as unions gathered at central public squares and public transport workers joined a nationwide general strike in protest at social security reforms being implemented by the center-right government.

In the capital, protesters from the ADEDY civil servants’ union and communist-affiliated PAME, among other groups, were gathering at central points to march onto Syntagma Square in front of Parliament, where the contentious legislation will be voted on by lawmakers.

Traffic jams were reported on Kifissos, Katehaki, Mesogeion, Kifissias, Alexandras and Vassilissis Sofias avenues, as well as on the northbound stretch of Syngrou Avenue. Roads to and from the port of Piraeus were also experiencing problems.

To help motorists, police have lifted the usual restrictions on cars in the city center and are allowing them to use bus lanes.

In Thessaloniki, too, streets in the city center were being closed to make way for a protest march, with food delivery workers holding a motorcycle rally on Egnatia and Agia Sofias streets before joining the main gathering of unions at Aristotelous Square.

The strike has left hundreds of thousands of commuters stranded as bus and trolley bus drivers have walked off the job in both cities, along with workers on Athens’ metro, ISAP electric railway and tram.

Out-of-town commuters, meanwhile, were in for a nasty surprise when workers on the suburban railway made an unannounced move to join the industrial action on Tuesday morning, despite assurances by operator Trainose on Monday that service would proceed as usual on both the suburban and national rail network.

Trainose CEO Filippos Tsailidis condemned the “sudden” decision by the workers to strike, saying in comments to Skai radio on Tuesday morning that the company will “do who it has to do,” without elaborating.

The head of the POS rail workers’ union, Panos Paraskevopoulos, however, told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency that Trainose had been informed of the decision to strike last week.

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