SACKED Finance Ministry cleaners demanding re-employment, occupied the Athens district tax office in Kallithea yesterday morning.
At the same time, state teachers on the ‘mobility scheme’ occupied the Kallithea technical college and school guards occupied the Kallithea Town Hall against their prospective sackings.
The Greek government has put some 14,000 public sector workers on the ‘mobility scheme’ since last summer, promising re-employment. Workers feel that this is an excuse for mass sackings by the end of the ‘mobility scheme’ period on March 23.
Those immediately affected are state secondary school teachers, ministries’ civil servants, school guards and municipal police.
Last summer, the Greek government sacked over 2,500 ERT workers (Public Television and Radio Corporation) and the 500 Finance Ministry cleaners. Both of these sections of workers have launched a fight with meetings and demonstrations which is continuing today.
The Greek armed riot police have been attacking nearly all of these workers’ mobilisations.
Last Thursday morning, squads of the armed riot police attacked fiercely in the Athens city centre a demonstration of workers organised by the KKE (Greek Communist Party) protesting against unemployment. Several workers were injured by the riot police tear-gas, truncheons and shields, including a KKE parliamentary deputy who was hit in the head.
The Greek coalition government had declared the Athens city centre around the Vouli building (Greek parliament) out of bounds for meetings and marches due to the visit of the German Head of State Joachim Gauck.
On Thursday afternoon, about 1,000 teachers, school guards, and civil servants on ‘mobility schemes’ attempted to march to the Vouli but were stopped by riot police who had placed police buses across all streets.
At the mass meetings, trade union leaders used high rhetoric to condemn the government and the riot police, but refused to call for a general strike and the overthrow of the government.
These trade union leaders organise weekly demonstrations of sections of workers as a protest, spreading illusions that somehow the Greek regime, installed on the orders of the EU and the IMF, will change its policies of mass sackings.
The EC-IMF-ECB troika representatives are in Athens dictating terms to the Greek government on mass sackings and the recapitalisation of the bankrupt Greek banks.
Although almost 50bn euros have been put into the Greek banks in the last three years, reports state that a further 6-10bn euros is necessary.
The opposition party Syriza (Coalition of Radical Left) have stated that Greek banks should be nationalised.
Meanwhile, in the eastern Aegean on Wednesday, a Greek Coast Guard patrol boat fired on a dingy with three Iranian refugees. Doctors at the hospital on the island of Chios said that all three persons had bullet wounds on their bodies.
