Newsgroups: bit.listserv.hellas
Date:         Thu, 3 Sep 1992 12:46:00 -0400
Reply-To:     Anastassiades - Advanced Rotorcraft Technology / NASA Ames
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From:         Anastassiades - Advanced Rotorcraft Technology / NASA Ames
              <tassos@ART.DNET.NASA.GOV>
Subject:      Eidhsh apo Athina
Comments: To: hellas@brownvm.bitnet@6913.DNET.NASA.GOV

Subject: Striking workers stage protest march through Athens
Keywords: international, non-usa government, government, strike, labor,
	non-usa economies, economy
Date: 3 Sep 92 14:12:06 GMT
Location: greece
ACategory: international
Slugword: greece-strikes
Priority: regular
Format: regular
ANPA: Wc: 511; Id: z2963; Sel: xxigf; Adate: 9-3-1015aed
Codes: yigfrxx., yiusrgr., yiefrgr., tncn....


	ATHENS, Greece (UPI) -- Thousands of striking Greek workers marched
through central Athens Thursday for the second time in eight days to
protest a bill in Parliament aimed at reducing retirement benefits to
public sector employees.
	The strikers, responding to a call by the General Confederation of
Greek Workers and the Public Sector Employees Unions federation, marched
from Omonia Square in central Athens to the Parliament building,
chanting slogans against the government.
	The unions were protesting a bill being pushed through Parliament by
conservative Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis to reduce retirement
benefits to employees of such public sector organizations as the Public
Power Corp.
	The bill is among measures the premier launched after he came to
power two years ago to revive the Greek economy, which he said had been
shattered by the eight-year rule of former Socialist Prime Minister
Andreas Papandreou.
	Thursday's strikes affected public transport, banks, electricity
supply, the state radio and television, civil aviation, Olympic Airways
and the state-run telecommunications organization.
	Unions in each of the state organizations stopped work for several
hours, and the Public Power Corp.'s union got around a legal ban on a
total electricity outages by cutting supplies to different areas of
Attica province at different hours of the day.
	Thursday's strikes and protest march were a repeat of union action a
week ago, also launched to protest the bill and to express support for
8,000 workers of the Athens Blue Bus service, which was dissolved when
employees stayed away from work for two weeks.
	Taking the lead in this week's strikes were the employees of the
Public Power Corp., who feared they would be worst affected by the bill
in Parliament.
	Their fears were apparently fed by remarks Economy Minister Stefanos
Manos made to a private television station. He said the Public Power
Corp. was overstaffed, and its employees had bloated salaries and
received unjustified retirement benefits.
	Since he came to power in April 1990, Mitsotakis has introduced a
series of economic reforms aimed at reducing the government's budget
deficit and reviving Greece's economy in general.
	His measures included privatizing state-owned companies and utility
organizations, or reducing their staffs to make them more efficient.
This was accompanied by increased taxes that have proved unpopular with
the Greek public.
	Papandreou's Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, or PASOK, the former
Communists in the Alliance of the Left Party, and the hard-core
Communists, are backing the unions, but lack votes in Parliament to stop
Mitsotakis's economic moves.
	In June 1989, Mitsotakis's conservatives New Democracy party said it
found the treasury almost empty after Papandreou was ousted in general
elections, and an interim coalition government had to borrow money from
the European Community to pay pensions to farmers.
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