Public employees’ union federation ADEDY in Greece have begun a twenty-four hour strike protesting against the evaluation system of public sector employees.
Hospitals, tax offices, prisons, municipal offices and all other public sector services are not operating today.
Greece’s public health system will be operating on a skeleton staff today, when doctors and support staff in hospitals, health centers, the ambulance service and welfare units join the strike action. The Union has planned a rally at 11 am at Syntagma Square, downtown Athens.
The government has asked the Athens Court to rule the strike as illegal and abusive, however the court’s decision is expected later in the day.
“The government, via the new evaluation system, is seeking to ‘create’ new victims that will be turned over to quench the ‘thirst’ of the troika. It is using machinations to break-up and privatise the public sector in health and welfare,” an announcement by the National Federation of Public Hospital Staff (POEDHN) said on Tuesday. According to the union, 40,000 health sector staff have signed that they refuse to participate in the evaluation process.
The hospital doctors’ union federation OENGE said the availability scheme, dismissals, disruption of labour relations and abolition of labour law in any meaningful sense sought to convert staff into “casual workers” with low pay and no labor or insurance rights.
Workers at the Agios Savvas ocology hospital, in a press conference, noted that the evaluation procedure imposed meant that 64 of the 429 nursing staff must be given a score below six, irrespective of their performance, when there was a five-month waiting list for the radiation therapy department and a two-month waiting list for the pathology-anatomy department.
Union members pointed out that there were currently fewer than 600 employees of all categories working in the hospital, when the organisational chart for 2013 called for a permanent staff of 1,071 in addition to doctors.
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