By Catherine Brown
An Athens football stadium was packed to capacity with 40,000 people on October 6, and another 20,000 gathered outside, all in solidarity with bus workers, who have been on strike since July.
The strikers, who have been sacked by the government, have almost daily marched through the streets in protest.
Sissy Vovou, a member of the Alternative Party, described to Green Left the response by the union movement to the attacks by the New Democracy government. It started with the bus workers' protest and escalated into series of one-day general strikes against the government's austerity program.
In August, the parliament passed a bill privatising the strike-bound Athens Urban Transport Company (EAS). An indefinite strike by 6000 workers had been called two weeks earlier, when the government sacked 1024 clerical and technical workers, in the hope of cutting costs and thereby reducing EAS's debts.
The army for the next two months ran a makeshift strike-breaking service, using hundreds of trucks and its own buses. The bill dissolved EAS and handed over its 1400 buses to private owners.
As justification for an austerity budget, the government has used the need to comply with stringent economic convergence criteria to meet the Maastricht deadline by the end of 1997.
"We said yes to Europe ... the ticket for Maastricht must be paid now", warned Stefanos Manos, the economy minister.
Manos also released the International Monetary Fund's annual report on the Greek economy in the hope of convincing workers to accept further austerity measures.
The IMF called for massive cuts to government spending, including rapid reforms to a "too generous" pension system. The government began drafting plans that included increases in various taxes, rises in government charges and further job losses.
But workers refused to accept the austerity plans. Vovou described the scene in mid-September: "Pickets are everywhere, in front of power stations, banks, post offices, company head offices. In many cities, clashes with riot police are an everyday event. Tear gas and CS gas have been used twice in Athens — fired into the strikers, not into the air as the law demands."
The British Guardian commented that "a sense of panic has gripped Greece". Other media list in horror the number of unions joining the strikers. Although many in the ruling New Democracy Party are questioning plans that have provoked such a militant response, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warned the Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis to "speed up" his program and to "take firm action".
Members of Mitsotakis' party fear such a course could cost them the election in 18 months' time. Vovou suggested that Mitsotakis may be replaced with a more moderate leader.
The opposition PASOK seems more interested in defeating the government at the polls than in the streets and through mass action. PASOK members of parliament voted in favour of the Maastricht Treaty, so any future PASOK government will find itself in a similar position of having to meet the economic convergence criteria.
Greek workers, whose purchasing power has dropped by about 20% in the last 18 months, have the European Community's lowest per capita income, despite often having two jobs.
The government by October 6 had buses, now owned by private shareholders, back on the streets of Athens. But the members of the bus union have not returned to work.
Working hours are now under attack with a unilateral government decision to allow flexible hours for shops. Only pressure from the church caused Sunday to remain outside the new hours. The government is trying to alter working hours in the banks, a particularly militant sector. Vovou says these attacks threaten the 40-hour week won 10 years ago.