Athens braced for 'mother of all strikes'
Thousands of riot police are being rushed to Athens ahead of what one Greek daily has dubbed 'the mother of all strikes' – a 48-hour stoppage with a pledge by unions to flood the capital with protesters


Helena Smith in Athens
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 18 October 2011 19.41 BST


Greek unions have promised to flood Athens with protesters in the biggest demonstrations the capital has so far seen, as politicians prepared for Thursday's vote on potentially make-or-break reforms demanded by the EU and IMF in return for further aid.

As activists warned of "the mother of all strikes" and the debt-laden country edged closer to chaos with rubbish piling up in streets and ministers locked out of their offices, 5,000 riot police were rushed to the capital in preparation for the protests.

"All of Athens will be flooded with protesters. These will be the biggest protests that Greece has ever seen," said Ilias Illiopoulos, who heads the union of public-sector employees, Adedy. "The ability of the people to tolerate policies that have only yielded poverty and despair has come to an end."

Amid rising anger over cuts that have pared wages, pensions and workers' rights, and sent taxes and inflation soaring, unions representing more than half Greece's five million workers said they would forge ahead with a 48-hour general strike beginning Wednesday.

The industrial action, which coincides with what the beleaguered prime minister, George Papandreou, has called the country's "most critical week", comes in the wake of often violent rallies and rolling walkouts as workers from rubbish collectors to judges, seamen to schoolteachers, transport employees to journalists have stepped up their resistance to the ruling socialists' reforms.

In a campaign of surprise sit-ins, civil servants have taken over government buildings and locked cabinet ministers out of their own offices.

Rotting

With protesting municipal employees blockading Athens' main landfill site for a second week and experts warning of a public health risk, the sight of mounds of rotting rubbish piling up around the capital has heightened the sense that the country is veering out of control.

Evangelos Venizelos, the embattled finance minister – who has been unable to enter his office for the past two weeks – spoke of the country being gripped by "complete lawlessness". Notices proclaiming "the massacre of our wages will be the nightmare of bankers" were taped across the facade of the economy ministry.

As EU officials struggle to find a new rescue plan for Greece, the picture of deepening chaos has added urgency to the demand, openly voiced by eurozone countries, that Athens should further relinquish its power to the bodies propping up its moribund economy.

Sceptical of its ability to implement reforms after months of failing to "walk its talk", several EU states say the country's stalled privatisation campaign should now be overseen by a European commission taskforce.

"This is a government that has lost credibility. No one believes it anymore," said the prominent political commentator Giorgos Kyrtsos. "It is obvious that the system cannot deliver and that the debt load is simply unviable."

The stinging austerity measures due to be voted on by the Greek parliament on Thursday will determine whether Athens gets a fresh instalment of aid from the €110bn rescue loans provided by the EU and International Monetary Fund in May last year. The cash injection is vital to pay public-sector wages and pensions. Senior government officials say the government has until 10 November before it is forced to declare bankruptcy – a move that would wreak havoc on the EU.

Incensed

The new austerity measures, which follow relentless cutbacks over the past year, would further slash public-sector jobs, wages and pensions, curtail collective bargaining agreements and impose a hugely unpopular levy on property owners.

The end of bargaining rights – viewed by both the EU and IMF as an essential step in making recession-hit Greece more competitive – has incensed trade unionists, who fear it will lead to the abolition of the minimum wage.

At least two MPs in Papandreou's increasingly divided Pasok party have said they will not endorse the measures because they are overly "anti-labour".

With the ballot and two-day strike casting a shadow of uncertainty over the country, and the governing socialists trailing badly in polls, many believe that Greece is at a critical point.

Appealing for unity, Papandreou held crisis talks with Antonis Samaras, leader of the main opposition New Democracy party, in a desperate bid to build a "common front" in time for Sunday's EU summit, at which Greece is expected to be the focus of talks.

Samaras' vehement opposition to the fiscal remedy demanded by the EU and IMF has caused deep consternation within both bodies.

"International lenders are greatly concerned that there are two Greeces," said one insider.

"At the IMF's annual meeting it was the first thing that Christine Lagarde [IMF managing director] brought up in discussion with Venizelos. Everyone views political consensus as vital for the enforcement of reforms."

The release of government figures showing a jump in unemployment rates from 16% to 16.5% heightened fears that the country is heading for a period of protracted political tumult.

"We are at the beginning of the crisis, not the end," said Kyrtsos. "Greece's economy has contracted for five consecutive years. Before us lies political, economic and social disarray. We are entering uncharted territory."

Athens braced for 'mother of all strikes' | Business | The Guardian

One man, a contract worker in the public sector, summed up the mood saying "unfortunately, the time has come for blood to be shed. Every time we protest peacefully more cuts are made and they are always at the expense of workers, never those who are to blame for the crisis. As one of our great singers said, it's only with fire and knives that men progress. People will have to die if we are going to stop these dreadful policies."


Had it not been for militants from the immensely disciplined communist party forming a human chain around the parliament, it is likely that the seething mass would have attempted to storm the building early on. As it was, clashes broke out as soon as riot police started firing tear gas to keep the crowds at bay with hundreds of protesters physically pushing their way up to the great marble steps of the parliament building itself.

Not quite what you lot were expecting, I'm guessing?

Clashes in Greece as strikes begin - European debt crisis live | Business | guardian.co.uk

Cuz that'll really help......dumbass behavior.

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Yes, it will, a great deal more than sitting sitting there and taking it.

Originally Posted by contracycle

Not quite what you lot were expecting, I'm guessing?

Well, I don't think you guys are ravaging monsters, looking for nothing more than a reason to chow down on a parliamentarian or two... But do you actually want a revolution or not?

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Yes. But preferably, without a bloodbath and a civil war. Once again, we don't want people taking revenge, we want a change of system.

Preferably?

But if it comes to it, then hang'em high eh?

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Shrug. I can't guarantee we could stop it. At least we're making the effort.

Trotsky remarked that if the Americans had a revolution it would probably be very bloody, because of the tendency to see things in black and white moral terms.

Originally Posted by contracycle

Yes. But preferably, without a bloodbath and a civil war. Once again, we don't want people taking revenge, we want a change of system.

TBF, I think it's going to be what it takes. People who aren't actually guilty don't like to be held responsible when some other people, however upset, start blaming them...

If you say to me "You're guilty, you've got to give up whatever we feel is fair" and I reply "Actually, I think you're at least as guilty as me and I don't really see why I should give up all that I hold dear simply to appease you", I think you got a genuine conflict of interest with very little middle ground... unless we can agree that, actually, the reasons behind these problems are fairly complex in their actual chains of events - although the results are somewhat simple and, to a degree, so are the solutions - None of which involve burning me & confiscating my (limited) possessions.

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I don't think most of that is either here nor there. Frex in the case of the Greek parliament, clerks and functionaries and civil servants might have been targeted even if they had no real responsibility.

Further, I don't rule out the fact that those responsible for these disasters may never acknowledge their culpability, either to to themselves or anyone else. But I can say that force can be limited to removing, deposing, and dispossessing rather than extending to homicide. If Papandreou, frex, has a thousand angry Greeks after him waving cleavers, it doesn't really matter whether he tries to fight or not. And showing magnanimity makes further dogged resistance less likely.