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Striking Greek Metro Workers Face Firings

metrostrikeAthens’ Metro strike will enter an eighth day on Jan. 24 as workers continued to ignore a court order to return to work and defy the government, which warned they will face legal action or even be fired if they don’t return.
The subway strike has immobilized much of the city’s center during a critical annual sales period for shops that suffered huge losses during the holiday sales period as austerity-crushed Greeks cut back heavily on spending.
With the Metro workers strike spreading to buses, trams, trains and trolleys with intermittent work stoppages, the only way for many beleaguered commuters and workers to get to work is drive or take taxis on choked roads, use a motorcycle or motorbike, or walk.
“The suffering of citizens and the disruption of the capital’s economic life cannot continue,” government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said as he called called on protesting workers to comply with a court ruling earlier this week that deemed their action illegal.
Kedikoglou said the workers – who object to a reduction in their salaries as part of pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions being imposed on most other government workers except those in the Parliament – risked losing their jobs if they continued with their action.
He did not say whether the option of issuing civil mobilization to force employees back to work was still on the table, though senior Transport Ministry officials indicated that it was. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has yet to speak out on the transportation crisis.
The prospect of such a measure, used against seamen, truckers and street cleaners in 2010 and 2011, appears to have divided the fragile coalition with both junior partners, PASOK and Democratic Left, expressing opposition while the ruling New Democracy Conservatives are holding fast against the strikers.
The newspaper Kathimerini said a schism developed between the two junior partners after PASOK officials reportedly pressed Transport Minister Costis Hatzidakis to accept an amendment proposed by the Socialist party exempting some public transport workers, such as drivers and engineers from pay cuts as Parliament workers have been.
That ired the other coalition partner, the Democratic Left, which said PASOK is trying to protect favored workers while pushing for austerity for everyone else.
Unionists have already called further protest action for next week with walkouts scheduled for Jan. 29 and labor unions gearing for a 24-hour general strike on Jan. 31.

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