Trade unions of the Public Power Corporation S.A. Hellas (DEI) have announced their plans for continuous strikes starting on Monday at midnight.
On Wednesday, January 29, the unions will gather at Korai square and march towards Syntagma, the centre of Greece’s capital. As they announced, DEI’s employees plan to stay outside the Greek parliament until the Greek Parliament discusses ADMIE’s (Independent Power Transmission Operator) privatization bill.
Unions’ representatives stated that the duration and the intensity of the protests will depend on the employees’ participation. The unions were against the privatization of ADMIE regardless of the cost as they believe that this sector should remain under the Greek government’s control for strategic and national security reasons.
The unions stated that the privatization will lead to an increase in fees for the use of the electricity grid. At the same time, DEI’s trade unions believe that the privatization, in light of the health insurer, might lawfully be called into question.
In particular, the unions mentioned that this bill overrules the regulation of 1999. With this regulation, it was clarified that the insurer’s property was built-in DEI’s property given the fact that until then employees were insured from the employer i.e. the same company which withheld contributions to fund its investments and paid for pensions and health insurance. The new bill which has been filed to the Greek Parliament anticipates that from now on the health insurance of DEI’s employees will be covered from the state’s budget.
Trade unions’ representatives claimed that within the next 20 days a new bill on the so-called “small DEI” is expected to be filed. In other words, the bill will concern the separation of power plants from DEI’s marketing division.
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