THE ITUC has condemned the Greek government’s use of wartime emergency powers to break a week-long strike by metro transit workers in the capital city of Athens.
On 25 January, riot police moved in and forced workers back to work under the threat of arrest.
This is the latest of a series of measures taken by the government that severely undermine the fundamental rights of workers in stark violation of international conventions to which Greece is a party.
In November 2012, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) issued a strong rebuke over the measures the Greek government had already taken, at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission and European Central Bank, which all but eliminated collective bargaining machinery that has taken generations to build.
Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said: ‘Enough is enough. The Troika’s misguided and illegal policies are creating long-term social and economic damage to an entire generation. Forcing people to work under threat of arrest will only produce more misery and instability.’
The metro workers’ strike is not just a reaction to pay-cuts being forced on them.
It is about the government’s disregard of existing collective agreements and the threat of being pushed into a new uniform public sector wage scheme imposed by the Troika.
Only days after riot police broke up a Metro strike, a new transport strike shut down buses and trains on January 28-29 and more work stoppages are being planned by doctors, health centres, ambulance drivers and utility workers. Trolley workers suspended their plans to strike.
The medical workers said they will walk off the job on today for 24 hours to protest against cuts in the national healthcare system and the government health insurance agency the National Organisation for Healthcare Provision (EOPYY).
The strike will be accompanied by rally outside the Health Ministry and march to Syntagma Square.
The main union representing Public Power Corporation workers, GENOP-DEI, said its members would hold a 24-hour strike today in support of metro, tram and electric railway workers in Athens who were forced to return to work after a nine-day strike over wage cuts.
The public transport workers were issued with civil mobilization orders by the government. GENOP-DEI said that the measure was ‘illegal, undemocratic and unconstitutional’. It is not clear if the strike threatens to cause any power outages, according to the Athens newspaper Kathimerini.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has taken a hard line against strikes and said no one will be exempted from austerity measures he imposed on the orders of international lenders, except for Parliament workers who have repeatedly threatened to strike if the government attempts to impose more pay cuts on them.
One of his coalition partners, PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos, reportedly wanted the transport workers excluded from more austerity measures too but relented and said the Metro strike was ‘unacceptable,’ while the other coalition member, Democratic Left head Fotis Kouvelis, who has occasionally complained about pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions, has also gone along with Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative party leader.
l A French appeal court has suspended a restructuring plan involving 8,000 job cuts at carmaker Peugeot Citroen as sought by the CGT union at parts subsidiary Faurecia, the lawyer for the workers Fiodor Rilov said on Tuesday.
The decision was taken as French automakers and trades unions sat down for what promised to be tough talks on plans presented as crucial for the company’s futures.
The CGT union had argued before the court that PSA Peugeot Citroen executives had not fulfilled their legal obligations to inform staff representatives and in particular the European works committee of plans that would affect the future of employees.
But a spokesman for PSA, which announced the closure of a factory, that ‘the project was not suspended today because we are in a negotiating phase’ which included a meeting scheduled on Tuesday with staff representatives.
‘The only obligation is that Faurecia must consult its works committee,’ he said.
Meanwhile, French rival Renault, which plans to eliminate 8,260 jobs by the end of 2016, was also gearing up for talks with trades unions on how to make it able to compete better on global markets. The company has warned that the future of two production sites could be at stake.
Surplus production capacity, especially in Europe where auto markets have slumped heavily, is a major challenge for French auto manufacturers.
Unions want Renault to redistribute the amount of work done at plants in France, Romania, Spain and Turkey, and workers downed tools at a plant in Douai, northern France to press such demands.
‘They want these sites to compete against each other, that’s sick,’ said FO union representative Jean-Marie Ravry.
He accused Renault executives of ‘blackmail’ with threats to close down factories and lay off workers, some of whom blocked access to a plant in Flins, west of Paris.
Renault also wants workers to be ready to move from one plant to another, to set a standard of 1,603 hours of work per year in all factories, and to reform time allowed for training and early retirement.
Another meeting took place at PSA’s headquarters in Paris on how to preserve jobs at two plants and on an additional 3,600 positions threatened by restructuring plans.
One union put some distance between itself and the militant CGT union which has lead shut-downs at an historic PSA factory in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris, which the automaker has said will be closed as part of the plan.
‘Negotiate not block: that is in the workers’ interest. We will give away nothing and continue with unions (excluding the CGT),’ tweeted Tanja Sussest of the SIA union which claims the most members at the Aulnay site.
But CGT representative Jean-Pierre Mercier said that almost 450 workers had declared themselves on strike there, and called for a demonstration in front of the PSA headquarters.
One of their demands is to extend holiday time for senior workers so those who have been with the company the longest can retire.
In Ireland, the talks on a possible successor to the Croke Park corporatist agreement have entered their third week.
Last week management gave some details of pay costs in each of the main sectors of the public service, and had indicated what savings they are seeking in each sector and which they want the unions to take joint responsibility for securing.
There were a number of sectoral meetings last week, in which unions sought more detail on pay costs and estimates of how much could be saved if various management proposals were implemented. There will be more meetings this week to explore issues at both sectoral and cross-sectoral level.
It is also expected that there will be talks on cross-sectoral issues raised by the unions, including outsourcing and the operation of redeployment.
At the outset, IMPACT said that a deal would not be possible on the basis of the entire package of proposals tabled by public service management at the opening of talks.
However, the union said it might be possible to negotiate an acceptable and equitable package if management’s opening ‘wish list’ were seen as an option of measures to explore.
Although nothing has been agreed yet – and much of the detail of management proposals is yet to be clarified – the key areas where they are seeking large savings include: A substantial reduction in the cost of overtime and other premium payments; teachers’ payments for substitution and supervision; a significant contribution from the ‘higher paid’ – although ‘higher paid’ has not been defined; and changes to working hours.
Unions believe that a significant part of the 1 billion euros that management seeks to cut from payroll costs will also come from savings for bringing forward headcount reduction – that is sackings.
The Government’s recently-announced ‘targeted voluntary redundancy scheme’ will bring forward expected savings by a year (from end 2015 to end 2014) and unions believe some of the savings from this must be credited to any new agreement.
Management says it wants to conclude the talks by mid-February, which is ambitious. A lot more work has to be done on the detail of all the issues.
This includes the difficult task of negotiating to minimise the impact on members and maintaining maximum protections over working conditions.
It also means a lot of technical work to see how proposals would work in practice and to ensure that there are no unintended consequences or anomalies arising from any measure.
If it proves possible to hammer out a package, it will be put to ballot of all the affected IMPACT members. The same will happen in the other unions. IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody, who is leading unions in the talks, has told management that any outcome would have to meet three criteria:
• Management would have to demonstrate that any proposal would make genuine and necessary savings
• Any package would have to be fair, which means the burden could not fall disproportionately on any group of staff, particularly those on low and middle incomes
• The outcome would have to pass the tests of ballots of union members.
Ministers and management have said that, while they want to reach an agreement, they will seek to impose 1 billion euros in payroll savings in the absence of a deal. In a recent TV interview, the Taoiseach said the Government would legislate to secure ‘at least’ 1 billion euros, and elements in the majority Government party would inevitably seek to extend the attack on terms and conditions in the absence of a deal.
The police unions have already walked out of the talks.
