Greek election workers plan strike on election day June 17th

A new crisis is facing Greece. New elections are scheduled for June 17. However a union representing municipal workers has called a two day strike for June 16th and June 17. These workers are key to running the election machinery.

Adding also to Greek woes is a rising March unemployment rate at 21.9 per cent. Last year at that time it was already at 15.7 per cent. The rate is up from February as well.

POE-OTA is calling the upcoming strike. The union complains that its members are paid less for election work than other employees of the government. Members of the union set up voting centers including booths and ballot boxes and also deal with voter documentation.

Leader of the union Themis Balassopoulos also said that the union will refuse to do any election work until the strike starting June 16. He also said municipal employees will refuse to do any election-related work until then. He said that last election members received just 75 dollars for their work a fraction of what other workers received. He said:. "If the country has no money, it can't just be for us while Interior Ministry employees get €1,800 ($2,300) — that's three months' salary for a municipal garbage collector. It's a provocation."

Balassopoulos also noted""The elections are up in the air," "We carry the ballot boxes, set up and clean the voting centers, we transport the used ballots... Anything you can imagine in connection with the elections, we do it." The government may get a court order ruling the strike illegal. The government said that it will take all necessary actions to see that elections are not disrupted. However, given the intensity of unrest in Greece that may not be possible. For more see this article. Another article is here.

The last quarter of 2011 saw the Greek jobless rate hit a record high at 20.7 per cent. Greece received a 130 billion euro bailout. However to receive the bailout Greece had to make severe budget cuts including reducing the number of government jobs.

The public and especially unions are angry. Consumer confidence is declining as well. The statistics agency ELSTAT indicated that jobs were being lost at an increasing rate. The unemployment rate of 20.7 in the last quarter of 2011 compares to 17.7 in the third quarter and 14.2 per cent in the final quarter of 2010.

Worst hit are Greek young people. In the 15 to 29 age range almost 40 per cent are unemployed. A year earlier the rate was 28 per cent itself a very high rate.

The Greek economy shrank 7 per cent in 2011 and is expected to remain in recession in 2012 for the fifth year in a row. Under these conditions it is difficult if not impossible for Greece to increase revenue and pay off its debts. No doubt the solution according to the Troika overseeing the bailout will be to demand further belt tightening.

Greece's December jobless rate was about double the euro zone average of 10.6 per cent. However, Spain's rate was even worse in the last quarter of 2011 at 22.9. For more see this BNN article.

Greece: Over 50 per cent of youth unemployed

The overall jobless rate in Greece has risen slightly in December to a record high 21 per cent. In November the rate was 20.9. New austerity measures when introduced will no doubt drive these figures even higher.

Even as stock markets react positively to news of a Greek debt deal the reserve army of the unemployed in Greece is growing by leaps and bounds. No doubt investors see this as positive since labor costs will fall. As the positive spinners will have it, Greece is becoming more competitive.

Youth between 15 and 24 suffered the worst with their unemployment now at 51.1 per cent. Budget cuts required for Greece to get a bail-out loan from the EU and IMF have resulted in many corporate closures and bankruptcies adding to the rolls of the unemployed.

Since 2008 the Greek economy has shrunk by about twenty per cent. About 600,000 jobs have been lost almost one in ten that existed before the recession.

Nicos Magginas from the National Bank of Greece said: "Despite some emergency government measures to boost employment in early 2012, it is hard to see how the upward unemployment trend can be stabilized in the first half of the year," For more see this Reuters article.