Posted on 02/10/2010 5:04:08 AM PST by Cheap_Hessian
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- A civil servants' strike grounded flights and shut down public services across Greece on Wednesday, as labor unions mounted their first major challenge to austerity measures in the debt-plagued country.
Air traffic controllers, customs and tax officials, hospital doctors and schoolteachers walked off the job for 24 hours to protest sweeping government spending cuts that will freeze salaries and new hiring, cut bonuses and stipends and increase the average retirement age by two years.
Turnout in Athens' two peaceful protest marches was low, at about 7,000 amid drizzly weather, in a country where union demonstrations typically draw tens of thousands. Another 3,000 people showed up for two rallies in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city.
The strike left state hospitals working with emergency staff only and disrupted national rail travel, although urban mass transport was unaffected.
"It's a war against workers and we will answer with war, with constant struggles until this policy is overturned," said Christos Katsiotis, a representative of a communist-party affiliated labor union.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Too lazy even to protest!
In other news:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2447561/posts
Goldman Caught Using European Loophole To Help Massively Understate Greek Deficit
The Business Insider ^ | 2/9/10 | Vincent Fernando
This looks pretty bad for both Goldman and Greece, as if things could look worse.
According to a scathing piece in Der Spiegel, European statisticians in Luxembourg have had a very difficult time getting proper Greek economic and financial data for years.
Worse yet, Goldman Sachs appears to have been helping Greece take advantage of a European regulatory loophole in order to understate its deficits:
"It's a war against workers and we will answer with war, with constant struggles until this policy is overturned," said Christos Katsiotis, a representative of a communist-party affiliated labor union.At least their unions are honest.
Doctors and nurses walk off job...............Hippocrates is rolling over in his grave....Unions are so wonderful aren’t they?.....The feeding class gets really pissed when their handouts are taken away, to hell with everybody else....................
It looks like the crisis of the EU continues to heat up.
Naaaaahhhh..
The Greeks I know are all mindlessly and childishly Communist (ie living here in America and voting Liberal ALL THE WAY-ALL THE TIME)
“hospital doctors...”
Something to look forward to with government run healthcare.
We already have “hospital doctors”, doctors employed by the hospital to make rounds of other doctor’s patients.
they tried the same thing on Reagan...
They once had a doctors strike in Israel and the mortality rate actually went down!
Did you hear Glenn Beck on this subject this morning? He cited a book by some commies called “The Coming Insurrecion”. He said that when the inevitable cutbacks come, we can expect violence from the Left.
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