Greeks Plan 4 Days of Defiance! This Week, page 1

Greeks Plan 4 Days of Defiance! This Week, page

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Topic started on 8-3-2010 @ 10:16 AM by TheCoffinman

Greek tax officials, court workers, sanitation workers and local government staff will stage a series of strikes and walk-outs this week, culminating in a 24-hour general strike Thursday to protest the government's latest austerity measures.

The protests, which will stretch over a four-day period, come after weekend public opinion polls show a Greek public divided over the latest measures

We are expecting a big turnout Thursday, there will be demonstrations in dozens of cities around Greece," said Andreas Petropoulos, spokesperson for civil service umbrella union ADEDY. "We are just at the beginning of our strike actions."

Thursday's general strike has been jointly called by ADEDY and it's private sector counterpart GSEE. But before then tax collectors have declared a 48-hour strike for Monday and Tuesday, while sanitation workers at Athens's municipal waste facility have announced they are closing the facility until Friday, extending a two-day long strike over the weekend.

At the same time, court workers will stage two-hour work stoppages every day through Thursday, and local government officials will stop work for four hours Wednesday.

Teachers and gas station owners are also considering separate strike actions this week, while the Communist-backed PAME union has called for a demonstration in central Athens at 1630 GMT Monday.

www.straitstimes.com...

GREEK tax collectors led fresh strikes on Monday against the government's austerity measures, just as Prime Minister George Papandreou appeared to have reassured key European partners.

Tax collectors began a two-day walkout, court employees launched a week-long series of two-hour work stoppages and garbage collectors also announced strikes in opposition to spending cuts calculated to save Greece's cash-strapped government 4.8 billion euros (S$9.09 billion).

'Our members are unduly affected by these austerity measures which constitute a salary cut of 200-600 euros' per month, the head of local administration staff Themis Balassopoulos told state television NET.

The walkouts come ahead of a general strike on Thursday - the second in a fortnight - called by the country's two main unions, the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) and the civil servants' union Adedy.

4 days of active resistance from the greek people against the fascist world banking cartel and thier givernment cronies... ill keep the weeks events updated on here as they happen. keep the greek people in your thoughts. may their voices be heard, loud and clear.

reply posted on 8-3-2010 @ 10:36 AM by TheCoffinman

blogs.wsj.com...

Here’s what’s happening this week:

Monday, March 8

Greek tax officials stage 48 hour strike

Garbage workers stage 4 day strike

Greek court officials stage 2-hour work stoppages (all week)

Greek Communist union PAME rally in central Athens

Wednesday, March 10

Local government workers stage 4-hour work stoppage

Thursday, March 11

Greek umbrella unions GSEE, ADEDY 24-hour strike. Protest in central Athens (0900 GMT)

Stikes are also being considered by teachers, gas station owners, lawyers. In a culture of protest that can sometimes turn violent, Greece is not a happy place these days.

[edit on 8-3-2010 by TheCoffinman]

reply posted on 8-3-2010 @ 10:47 AM by TheCoffinman

news.smh.com.au...

Gas station owners and teachers are also planning industrial actions and police union members have been called to demonstrate in front of Athens police headquarters on Thursday

reply posted on 8-3-2010 @ 12:23 PM by Rockpuck

reply to post by TheCoffinman

Please.. the Greeks are not protesting against the "fascist world banking cartels" .. these are babies upset that their salary got cut and their pensions frozen during an economic depression.

If the fascist world banking cartel gave them a raise, they would bow before it.

Hardly worth commending.

reply posted on 8-3-2010 @ 12:46 PM by TheCoffinman

reply to post by Rockpuck

why should the people pay for their leaders mistakes? why should they pay for criminal private banking activities by goldman sachs and the greek central bank? $hit rolls downhill... those at the bottom always get shafted. the people of iceland know whats goin on and they were lucky enough to have a government right now that let them vote on it but only because they know the people arent afraid to topple thier government. now thats direct democracy...

www.thedailybeast.com...

Just months before the current crisis, in November 2009, Goldman president Gary Cohn led a group of banks in offering Greece a way to refinance their health-care debt, but it was hardly the first of such efforts. In 2001, Goldman Sachs engineered multi-billion dollar loans for the government hidden behind currency trades to help it skirt the EU's deficit rules. “Politicians want to pass the ball forward, and if a banker can show them a way to pass a problem to the future, they will fall for it,”

www.newser.com...

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and others who helped mask the true extent of Greece's financial problems are now placing bets against the country on a new index that lets players make credit-default swaps-- essentially, bets on whether or not a country will go bust.

it has everything to do with the banker elite and their government puppets... its not capitalism or democratic, its fascist

reply posted on 8-3-2010 @ 10:58 PM by Rockpuck

reply to post by TheCoffinman

why should the people pay for their leaders mistakes?

No no no .. this is not "us vs them" in Greece. Greece did not suffer a banking collapse like Iceland, they were not thrust into depression because some corporate giants screwed them. They went broke because their SOCIALIST government had these massive, outragious programs without anyone to support it! You cannot have a government that spends spend spend while bringing nothing in.. it won't last. Greece was selling bonds to support the socialist programs.

The EU is demanding Greece reign in Government spending... THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BANKS. In response the Greek government has cut salaries to government employees, it has frozen pension funds, and cut services across the country. The result? Greeks protest. But then again, if a government official in Athens cuts wind in the middle of a busy street the Greeks protest.

Greece is learning a valuable lesson: Socialism without industry WILL FAIL.

You post news sources about banks hiding Greece's debt, about them loaning to them in emergency funds .. what were they hiding? Greek healthcare debt??!?

Had Greece cut the budget to the health care system, a full scale riot would have broke out anyways.

Socialist.

reply posted on 9-3-2010 @ 09:10 AM by TheCoffinman

news.ninemsn.com.au...

A support strike by sailors will tie up ships at harbour. Air and rail transport is also likely to be disrupted.

The unions are outraged by a wave of state spending cuts and tax rises intended to cut this year's deficit of 12.7 per cent of output and to get to grips with the country's debt of nearly E300 billion ($A449.71 billion).

"The government's measures pile further misery on the lowest wages in Europe, leading to prolonged recession and unemployment," the civil servants' union Adedy said in its strike call.

A new poll late on Monday found that 65.3 per cent of Greeks believe the austerity measures to be unfair.

The Greek economy, which is mired in a recession, ran into more trouble on Tuesday when the national statistics agency reported an the annual inflation rate jumped by four points to 2.8 per cent in February.

Unemployment currently stands at over 10 per cent.

this crisis is about money, and when money is involved, banks are involved. im no socialist but an anarchist. america is in the same boat as greece except we refuse to acknoledge it and so we will continue sinking..

In early 2010, fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed concerning eurozone countries such as Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. This led to a crisis of confidence as well as the widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps between these countries and other eurozone members, specifically Germany and France. At the beginning of February 2010, a €500 million government bond auction in Portugal only successfully raised €300 million, raising the cost of insuring against a Portuguese debt default. The failed Portuguese bond auction further intensified the fear that the emerging sovereign debt issues could become a global contagion. These fears led to a weakening of the euro and a widespread global stock and commodity selloff in February 2010

en.wikipedia.org...

hmm credit default swaps.... now where have i heard that before...

reply posted on 9-3-2010 @ 10:28 PM by TheCoffinman

www.businessweek.com...

Striking government workers in Greece say they will extend a garbage strike that has led to piles of rubbish in the streets of Athens.

The strike is part of the protests against economic austerity measures aimed at solving the country's debt crisis.

The protesters said they will keep landfills in Athens other cities closed through Thursday

www.businessweek.com...

On Tuesday, groups of unemployed former public sector workers continued to block access to Greece's Labor Ministry and the General Accounting Office -- the latest in a series of occupations since the government introduced tougher austerity measures last week to try and rescue the country's dire public finances.

"I have two small children and have haven't got any money since December," said laid-off airline mechanic Ilias Sidiropoulos, manning a roadblock on a central Athens avenue.

"We will stay here as long as we have to," he said, barely audible over blaring car horns, as irate drivers funneled their way off the blocked four-lane avenue and into a narrow side road.

Sidiropoulos said he was laid off when Greek carrier Olympic Airlines was privatized last year and has still not received severance pay or any word about a promised job alternative.

He joined other laid-off protesters who lined up trash bins across central Panepistimiou Street and have kept the Finance Ministry's General Accounting Office closed for six days.

At the Labor Ministry, blockaded for two days, laid-off contract worker Pavlos Logaras said about 100 people -- living on takeaway meals brought by motorcycle delivery -- would continue to occupy the building until the government listened to their demands

[edit on 9-3-2010 by TheCoffinman]

reply posted on 10-3-2010 @ 09:45 AM by TheCoffinman

www.reuters.com...

IRELAND - Ireland's biggest union SIPTU plans to stage a two-day strike at seven Dublin hospitals between April 7-9 in protest against pay cuts imposed by the government to stabilise the budget deficit.

-- The planned work stoppage by some 4,500 porters, caterers, security and other low-paid staff is the first major action to be flagged as part a general wave of industrial strife unions announced on Monday

GREECE - Greece's biggest labour unions have planned a 24-hour nationwide strike on March 11 in protest at the government's austerity plans.

-- The private sector GSEE union and its sister public sector union ADEDY, which represent half of Greece's 5-million workforce, called on workers to stop work and attend a rally outside parliament. ADEDY has already called a 24-hour stoppage for March 16.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

All flights to and from Greece including the country's popular holiday islands will be grounded on Thursday after the country's air traffic controllers' union announced it would join a national general strike

reply posted on 10-3-2010 @ 04:14 PM by TheCoffinman

bigpondnews.com...

Workers in the city staged a mock funeral to symbolise the 'death' of their benefits

lol nice...

reply posted on 11-3-2010 @ 10:27 AM by TheCoffinman

www.reuters.com...

Police clashed with stone-throwing youths in Athens on Thursday as tens of thousands protested draconian cutbacks aimed at pulling Greece out of a debt crisis shaking the euro zone.

About 50 black-hooded youths hurled sticks and pieces of marble broken from the steps of the Bank of Greece at police, who responded with several rounds of tear gas.

The youths threw petrol bombs, smashed shop windows and set garbage containers on fire, but the level of violence was much lower than during 2008 riots that paralysed the city for weeks after the police killing of a teenager.

Waving leftist and anarchist flags, the hooded youths chanted "Let parliament burn."

Two police officers were wounded during the clashes and 16 protesters detained, a government official said.

In otherwise largely peaceful protests, about 23,000 people marched through Athens to protest cuts in civil servants' income, tax hikes, a pension freeze and plans to raise the retirement age. Public and private sector workers staged a nationwide strike.

www.google.com...

Violence erupted in the capital with riot police firing tear gas at hooded youths who hurled firebombs and vandalised stores near parliament.

There were clashes in other parts of Athens where masked youths threw firebombs and stones at police and burned a car, before security forces fired back more tear gas.

Youths from a 300-strong anarchist group attacked police and vandalised a dozen stores in the area near the Athens Polytechnic, police said.

Small groups smash store windows in the main Omonia Square after the end of two demonstrations that drew many thousand participants. Five people were detained, a police source said.

In the northern city of Thessaloniki, protesters threw eggs and yoghurt cartons stolen from a supermarket at a government building, police said.

online.wsj.com...

"There is a big turnout today and that shows people are concerned," said Dimitris Papageorgiou, 49, a worker at the Bank of Greece. "Today's protest is because of the austerity measures. Why do the people always have to pay? Who is at fault? It's the foreign speculators and the useless policies of previous governments."

Recent polls show that the Greek public is divided over the recent austerity plan. While the public opposes specific measures, such as a hike in Greece's fuel and value-added taxes, analysts say there is a broad acceptance in the public that action necessary to lift Greece out of its economic crisis.

"No one really expects the measures to be withdrawn. They were adopted by the government to avoid even worse consequences," said Lefteris Eleftheriadis, 48, a biologist who works in Greece's agriculture ministry and was participating in Thursday's protest.

The strike has affected public transport, government ministries and state-owned companies, while all flights into and out of the country have been grounded and all ferry and rail services have been suspended.

On the streets of Athens, normal workday activity was muted. Street lights and road signs were festooned with strike posters announcing a protest rally for 0900 GMT. Usual morning news shows on local television were replaced with alternative programming. Many businesses were shuttered amid fear of violence.

"No to unjust and antisocial measures," said ADEDY on its website. "The current policies are bankrupting the lives of salaried workers and pensioners."

Main thoroughfares around the center of the city were blocked by police in anticipation of a large turnout.

Just off the city's main square a group of about 200 police and fire officials also staged a sympathy protest, challenging the government to fulfill its pre-election promises to protect workers salaries.

reply posted on 11-3-2010 @ 01:46 PM by pause4thought

Just a few ugly snaps: news.bbc.co.uk...

This situation is not going away. It looks set to snowball, with major reverberations throughout Europe, to say the least. Definitely one to watch!

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