AthensGreece experienced a general strike this Wednesday with one of the highest attendances in the last ten years, according to the unions. Citizens are demanding an increase in wages to be able to cope with inflation – which is currently around 12% -, more help for households in the face of winter and more measures to curb price increases of daily life.
A demonstration called in Athens for this morning by the main Greek unions and followed by other smaller unions has ended in Syntagma Square, where the Parliament is located, and there have been some scuffles between the demonstrators and the Greek police.
“Mitsotakis and his finance minister [Christos Staikouras] they don’t know how difficult it is to live in these conditions. Do you know how we people survive on 600 euros a month? This is the reality for the majority of the Greek population,” complained Argiri Erotokritou, a 35-year-old doctor. “The situation in Greek hospitals, for example, is very complicated and dramatic, especially after the last wave of the pandemic , there are fewer and fewer workers,” he added, while lamenting that salaries “have not been updated in the last fifteen years.” The average salary of a doctor who starts working is approximately 950 euros per month.
Basic basket, subsidies and unconvincing budgets
On October 3, the draft state budgets for 2023 were presented, described as historic for being the first in twelve years to be drawn up outside the monitoring framework of the Troika (International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission). The draft predicts a growth rate of 2.1% – due to an upswing in tourism – but for the unions, these general benefits do not solve the situation.
On the other hand, one of the measures that the government has taken in order to alleviate the economic crisis is the launch, from November 2, of a shopping basket with 51 essential products at reduced prices. This basket changes every week and is mandatory for supermarkets in the country. Since September 2021, the government has also allocated 9 billion euros in subsidies to the energy sector, but there are those who claim more direct investment. “These budgets do not solve the real problems of the people and Mitsotakis only governs for the rich,” said Thomas Mangos, 32, a Syriza voter.
Dimitris Oikonomou, from the political committee of the social democrat Pasok and present at the demonstration, considers that the measures adopted by the executive of Mitsotakis are facing the gallery. “The impoverishment of the Greek people under the pretext of the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine, at a time when corporate giants and energy suppliers are delivering balance sheets with unprecedented super profits, leaves no room for other action that to campaign to stop the theater of the absurd, in which spectators contemplate with astonishment the upward races of the prices of the most basic items,” declares the majority union.
The state of the economy, the main concern of Greek citizens at the moment, will be one of the key elements of the electoral campaign. “The success of this strike is a very important step for the working class,” Petros Constantinou, who is part of the Athens Municipal Council for Antarsya (Greek anti-capitalist left) and national coordinator of the Greek anti-fascist movement. Everything seems to indicate that it will not be an easy end of the mandate for Kyriakos Mitsotakis, immersed in various institutional crises and an economic crisis that the public knows all too well.