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Tsipras Says No Workers Would be Fired Under SYRIZA

SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras at a party rally in Sparta

ATHENS – As Greece’s economy continues to sink under the weight of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers, Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras said if he wins the critical June 17 elections that he would not proceed with 150,000 firings demanded by international lenders.
The Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) said the sackings are required because Greece can no longer continue to keep paying redundant workers, but political leaders have refused so far to let any go because critics have said they were hired in return for votes by alternating administrations of New Democracy Conservatives and PASOK Socialist governments.
In a duel with Conservative leader Antonis Samaras to win the elections, Tsipras said that instead of firing unnecessary workers that his party would conduct its own evaluation of who would stay and who would be let go, a continuation of political assessments of who gets jobs and keeps them. That would end the cooperation on employee evaluations Greece has begun with a European Commission Task Force. Tspiras also has said he would restore pay cuts, reverse tax hikes and raise pensions that had been slashed as well, but didn’t say where the money would come from as Greece is almost totally dependent on Troika funding, a first bailout of $152 billion and a second for $173 billion that is on hold until after the elections.
Tsipras visited the National School of Public Administration, where he told his audience of his plans to keep the status quo in the public sector that is largely responsible for Greece accumulating $460 billion in debt. He said  that, “Using the (EU-IMF) memorandum as their playbook, New Democracy wants to fire 150,000 civil servants by 2015 but will not address the public sector being bureaucratic and dysfunctional,” he said. “Firings would limit its basic operations,” despite criticism that the Greek public sector is bloated and inefficient.
Tsipras added that the current process of creating an evaluation process for civil servants with the help of French experts brought to Greece by the EU Task Force would be abandoned. “We do not need any task force to tell us what to do,” he said. “The chronic weakness of our public administration is mainly due to the plundering of the public sector by governments that imposed party politics and patron-client relations,” he said, adding that there had been a lack of strategic planning.
The SYRIZA leader also pledged to ban all consultants from the public sector, accusing previous ministers of hiring “armies of advisers and bypassing the public administration’s hierarchy.” Tsipras said he would trust civil servants regardless of their political beliefs. “There is potential for a public sector that will be based on meritocracy and its trained staff,” he said. Exit polls from the stalemated May 6 elections that failed to create a government indicated that SYRIZA was the most popular party among civil servants.
(Sources: Kathimerini)

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