Greece -Unions envisage popular revolt over bailout -February 23, 2012

After the latest bailout deal was secured by the parliamentary vote on Tuesday 22 February, the popular fury at the terms of the rescue showed no signs of ebbing. “Two years ago we were demonstrating about wage and pension cuts but now they want to take away everything,” said Ilias Iliopoulos of the civil service confederation ADEDY, adding: “People are literally hungry and the number of homeless is growing every day … soon they won't take anymore. There'll be a popular revolt.” The unions, ADEDY and the GSEE private sector confederation, emphasize that the new austerity measures include a 22% cut in the minimum wage, 15% cut to supplementary pensions and a further cut of 15,000 public sector jobs. International union federations have also reacted on the social effects of the measures and the exclusion of the unions from decision-making. For example, on 21 February David Cockroft, general secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), said in a letter to the Greek government that Greek workers were being “disregarded and damaged” by efforts to meet the conditions, imposed on the country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Eurozone countries.

English: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/22/greek-unions ...  
http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/7076

 

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the future editor – as from the March 2012 issue – Jan Cremers, at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl, or Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org, communications officer at the ETUI. The editor of this issue was Maarten van Klaveren, M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2012. To unsubscribe, please contact Mariya Nikolova.