May Day Labour Day Holiday in Greece Moved to 7 May to Help Struggling Store Owners

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The Labour Ministry agreed that the May Day Labour Day holiday would be on Tuesday, 7 May. The change came after a request by store owners, who feared that they’d lose vital business if May Day were on 1 May, which is also the Wednesday before Orthodox Easter. Traders hope that they’d see an upturn in the number of customers visiting their shops ahead of the Easter holidays. Therefore, the holiday would be on a day when stores would close anyway, due to the Easter break. Only businesses that work on Sundays or during public holidays would be able to operate normally on 7 May.

8 April 2013

Kathimerini

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_08/04/2013_492490

Greece Loses 400,000 Civil Service Jobs to Crisis

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On Thursday, Greek Administrative Reform Minister Antonis Maniatakis said that the number of Greek civil servants fell by 400,000 over three years of crisis. He told a parliamentary hearing that there were nearly a million civil servants in 2009, but now there are just 640,000. He added that as more than 40,000 are due to be pensioned off before the end of the year, no more than 600,000 will be left. Maniatakis believes that the state should move more government employees into sectors such as the police, education, local administration, and healthcare. Wage and personnel cuts in a number of public sectors are part of new austerity measures approved by parliament last week, but civil servants vigorously opposed them. According to Euronews, Kostas Tsikrikas of government employee union ADEDY said, “We continue our battle to demand from the government that there isn’t a single layoff in the public sector”. Civil service employees have seen their salaries cut 40 percent since 2010 and their holiday bonuses scrapped.

22 November 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/business/20121122/177673028.html

Editor’s Note:

”Reform” in ”Rightspeak” means that ordinary people take it in the neck so that the Affluent Effluent can party on undisturbed, without any sacrifices or belt-tightening. In their eyes, they’re the “makers” and we’re the “takers”. If that’s so, why is it that they have the above-average incomes and that they don’t do any actual work themselves? Just wonderin’…

BMD

 

Troika Demands that Greece Fire All Its Tax Collectors

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The troika of Greece’s foreign creditors demanded that the Greek government fire all of the tax collectors from the Finance Ministry in a move to make the tax collectors service more efficient and corruption-free. The demand is part of a confidential memorandum now being drawn up by the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. The document will decide the issue of another bailout tranche, without which the debt-stricken country won’t be able to service its foreign debt, forcing it to declare sovereign default.

23 October 2012 (MSK)

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_10_23/Troika-demands-all-Greek-tax-collectors-be-fired/

Greece Braces for General Strike Against Austerity

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Greek doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, and other workers will go on strike on Wednesday, one day prior to national protests against the government’s austerity measures. A number of Greek trades unions plan to march and hold a rally in front of the Finance Ministry in Athens. Protests against the austerity measures involving tens of thousands people resumed in Greece last month after the country’s coalition government took office in July. September rally participants threw stones at police and Molotov cocktails at the parliament building in the central square, whilst police responded with tear gas. The Greek government announced that it’d cut government spending by about 12 billion Euros (485 billion Roubles. 15.75 billion USD. 9.75 billion UK Pounds); however, coalition leaders in parliament claimed that the debate over austerity is still in progress.

17 October 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/world/20121017/176686386.html

 

Greek leader Warns “We’re Going to Run Out of Money Next Month”

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Yesterday, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras warned that his country’s coffers would run dry by November unless international lenders disbursed a vital 31.5 billion euro (1.28 trillion Roubles. 41 billion USD. 25.5 billion UK Pounds) loan instalment soon. Samaras invoked a comparison with the Weimar Republic in Germany before the Second World War, warning of “chaos” in Greece if his coalition government failed and democracy collapsed. Mr Samaras told reporters, “The government’s giving a fight on all sides for the credibility and salvation of this country so the people’s sacrifices don’t go to waste”.

Athens and its debt inspectors are still trying to hash out new spending cuts to help speed up the release of the next round of bailout funds. Amid this uncertainty, Mr Samaras highlighted the consequences of a Greek exit from the euro, warning it would be “a total disaster” and could prove “very destabilising” for Europe, saying that once one member country left, the international markets would probably target the next “weakest link”. Samaras pointed up that this would prove “painful for everybody and could prove fatal for many”. Athens is grappling with the worst financial crisis of its modern history with one in four people out of a job and the country’s recession predicted to continue for a sixth year. In Athens, international lenders continue to delay the release of the loans. Gerry Rice, a spokesman from the IMF, said the lending organisation would not hand out its portion of cash unless it gauged the viability of Greece’s debt as being sustainable or other lenders filled a financing gap in the bailout.

In an interview published yesterday with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Mr Samaras warned that the cohesion of Greek society was being “endangered by rising unemployment, as was Germany towards the end of the Weimar Republic”. Such grim conditions are fertile ground for the rise of extremism. Support for the extreme-right Golden Dawn party has soared, and the Prime Minister warned in the interview that Greek democracy is “facing perhaps its greatest challenge”. Society, he went on, was threatened by extreme left-wing populists and “the rise of a right-wing extremist, one might say fascist, neo-Nazi party. People know that this government means Greece’s last chance. We’ll make it. If we fail, chaos awaits us”. He also outlined solutions, including the recapitalisation of Greece’s banks directly from a European fund to avoid further debt piling onto the country, noting, “The European Central Bank, which owns Greek government debt, could declare itself happy with lower interest… or agree to a rollover when these bonds are due”. So far, EU officials have adamantly rejected this.

A German government spokesman announced yesterday that Chancellor Angela Merkel would go to Athens on Monday to show support for reform efforts. However, many Greeks blame Germany’s insistence on austerity for their hardship, and the left-wing SYRIZA party urged unions to protest against the German leader. Union leaders said, “Workers, pensioners and unemployed people can take no more of the EU’s punitive policies”. Nevertheless, a German statement stressed that it wants Greece to stay in the euro bloc, albeit while pushing ahead with painful reforms. Since Greece received its first bailout in May 2010, it’s repeatedly slashed incomes, increased taxes, and raised retirement ages.

6 October 2012

Nathalie Savaricas

Independent (London UK)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/were-going-to-run-out-of-money-next-month-warns-greek-leader-8200184.html

Editor’s Note:

“Reform” means pain (and downright penury) for working people and retirees so that the McMansion filth can party on without a care. That’s the policy of the US Republican Party, too… it intends to slam its boot-heel hard into the faces of the most vulnerable Americans so that the Affluent Effluent can profit whilst kids starve. That’s objectively evil… a vote for the Republican Party (or any of its foreign analogues) is a vote for undisguised greed, malevolence, and wickedness. The Republicans worship Almighty Mammon… and God did say, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. If you shill for the GOP, you’re my enemy… full stop… I’ll do whatever I can to defeat your criminal ideology and stop its malicious grasping any way that I can. Yes… our immortal souls DO depend on it…

BMD 

Greek Tax Officers Go Out On Strike

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Greek tax officers closed their offices and joined the continuing strikes in protest against wage reductions and forthcoming public sector layoffs, as well as against unfair taxes and exactions that they feel the government is about to declare. In the next few days, the Cabinet should decide on almost 12 billion Euros (485 billion Roubles. 15.5 billion USD. 9.6 million UK Pounds) in austerity measures in exchange for another EU/IMF loan of 31 billion Euros (1.25 trillion Roubles. 40 billion USD. 25 billion UK Pounds).

Observers expect the forthcoming round of belt-tightening to result in further cuts to wages and pensions. Athens Metro workers and tram drivers went on strike yesterday. Also striking are judges, hotel personnel, doctors, and chemists. A general 24-hour strike is due in Greece on the 26th of this month. The Greek government agreed with Troika experts on the increase of the pension age from 65 to 67 in a move that will enable Greece to save more than one billion Euros (40 billion Roubles. 1.3 billion USD. 800 million UK Pounds) annually. The Troika wants the coalition cabinet of Antonis Samaras to agree to austerity measures to the tune of 12 billion Euros for 2013 and 2014. However, the parliamentary coalition partners of his New Democracy Party, the PASOK Socialist Party and the moderate Democratic Left Party, oppose those measures. Both PASOK and Democratic Left are against major cuts in social spending.

Workers on the metro, trams, and urban trains as well as doctors, hotel staff, and some university professors in Athens have gone on a 24-hour strike over the government’s intention to cut salaries. More protests are due on 26 September, when the country’s leading trade unions shall launch a general strike. A 24-hour labour action by transport workers is due to begin shortly, and a series of warning strikes by state employees, are expected to paralyze Athens in the next few days.

The unions argue that the amount of money allocated by public transport companies on wages declined by half during the crisis. The strikers are also unhappy with an expected increase in the cost of public transport and demand that the government provide free transport passes to the unemployed, students, and pensioners.

Greek judges joined a strike action by state sector employees who’ve protested wage cuts. As the state reduced judges’ salaries by as much as 38 per cent over the past few weeks, judges’ associations warn that further pay cuts are putting their constitutional position as guarantors of the court system under threat. Whilst on strike, judges are hearing only cases nearing the statute of limitations.

The Greek government tabled a bill to halve the monthly salary of the President to 11,500 Euros (462,000 Roubles. 14,900 USD. 9,200 UK Pounds) and reduce his monthly hospitality expenses by one-third to 6,240 Euros (250,000 Roubles. 8,000 USD. 5,000 UK Pounds). The presidential pension is in for similar cuts. The measures should save the Greek treasury 350,000 Euros (14.1 million Roubles. 450,000 USD. 280,000 UK Pounds) each year.

21 September 2012

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_09_21/Greek-tax-officers-go-out-on-strike/

Editor’s Note:

The New Democracy slimers (who are equivalent to the US Republican Party), want to spare the Affluent Effluent by kicking the iaias and papous in the face. That’s why the Church of Greece is against the cuts in social spending. It’s not just the cuts… it’s the fact that the idle rich shall continue to party whilst poor people beg on the streets. That’s what Willy and Lyin’ Ryan want in the USA. That’s why we must vote on 6 November to re-elect the President. He’s no prize, to be sure, but he won’t club poor people in the face to benefit the rich like himself. After all, he paid a lower proportion of his income in tax than many making only 1 percent of his income. That’s called evil… that’s called Mammon-worship.

Orthodox people should be aware that the konvertsy (like all unhinged cultists) favour Willy’s nasty kleptocratic dreams. Not only should we vote against Willy, we should clean out his supporters in the Church… they support objective evil, full stop. Trust me, being for the illegalisation of abortion is a piffle when put in the balance with insane warmongering, rampant greed, pandering to sectarian crazies, and stacking the deck further in favour of the fatcats. On the one hand, we have a small amount of evil admixed with much good… on the other we have monstrous evil wearing a fig-leaf of “morality”. Our Lord Christ promised us that the wheat and tares would be intermixed until the Last Day. So be it… that means that we must choose the least evil path (not the “best”, for that’s not available). That means that all decent Christians must reject the money-grubbing consumerist greed of the Republican Party. It means that one shouldn’t listen to the likes of Fathausen, Freddie M-G, Mattingly, Reardon, Dreher, et al… they’re all shills for the Radical Godless Right (especially in their pandering to sectarian cultists (for that is what Mormonism and Pentecostalism are)).

There’s NO perfection out there…

BMD