Having crushed workers strikes with riot police, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras wants to make it tougher for workers to walk off the job and is setting his sights on reducing Greece’s hugely redundant civil servant sector.
Under continued pressure from the country’s international lenders, the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) to get rid of unnecessary workers, the government wants to start the process of firing 25,000 of them, the newspaper Kathimerini reported.
The newspaper said that, for now, a big jump in early retirements would mollify the Troika for now about reduction in the workforce, although the retirees will have to wait up to two years to get paid while Greece’s investors are being paid back immediately. The newspaper said that the government will also go after workers with serious violations of workplace codes. Typically, nothing happens to them even for serious transgressions.
Greece’s public workforce includes hundreds of thousands of needless workers hired in return for votes by his New Democracy Conservatives and the PASOK Socialists over the last 40 years. Samaras also has to take on the labor unions and Labor Ministry officials refuted reports that the government is considering making changes to labor regulations that would make it more difficult for unions to call strikes.
The change-of-heart came after Samaras’ coalition partners, PASOK and the Democratic Left, which supported civil mobilization orders against striking Metro workers and seamen, said they would oppose the new measures.
Samaras is treading easy with protesting farmers though, and even offered them a big package of concessions, including tax breaks, which they rejected and said they would shut down key roads across the country with their tractors for an hour each day until they get everything they want.
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