Riot police fired tear gas on Tuesday 21 October to disperse demonstrators amid a nationwide general strike that brought air, rail and ferry traffic to a halt.
The general strike by millions of workers also crippled urban, rail and sea transport and kept schools, banks and public offices shut. State hospitals and utilities, including the partially privatized OTE telecom company, operated on skeleton staff while journalists staged a media blackout.
The GSEE private sector union federation and its public sector counterpart ADEDY organized the strike. Both unions represent about half the country’s workforce of five million. A union spokesperson stated, “Participation is very high, in many sectors it exceeds 90% of the work force.”
Unions are opposing privatisation of Olympic Airlines and attacks on pensions proposed by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis’s right-wing government. Pension “reforms” include ending early retirement schemes, merging pension funds and capping auxiliary pensions.
Other demands include a doubling of the minimum wage.