GREEK local government along with college and university administrative workers are continuing with occupations, strikes and demonstrations against the government’s mass sackings plans.
On Wednesday, the trades unions confederation of local government workers POE-OTA organised demonstrations in Athens and in all major Greek cities. They were joined by civil servants who are also facing mass sackings.
Demonstrators chanted ‘Capitalists you are robbers – your profits cost human lives’, ‘Athens, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon – All Europe is fighting’, and ‘No to sackings and cuts – make the capitalists pay for the crisis’.
Marchers carried placards with the photographs of the 1930s dictator Metaxas next to the present Minister for Administrative Reforms Manitakis with the caption ‘Same policies, same results – sackings and unemployment.’
As the march passed by the offices of the Democratic Left party, one of the three parties that make up the current Greek coalition government, rubbish was deposited on the building’s entrance.
POE-OTA has declared a national strike to Sunday.
In Athens, armed riot police had blocked the road leading to the Ministry of Administrative Reform with buses to prevent workers reaching the building. But the POE-OTA-organised march pushed aside the double metal fence around the Vouli (Greek parliament) building.
It entered the courtyard chanting ‘Bread, Education and Freedom – the Junta did not disappear in 1973’, the year of the Athens Polytechnic Uprising against the military junta then ruling Greece.
