Transport strike took place in Greece

At Thursday, November 25, 2010 in Athens urban transport workers, unhappy with government plans to restructure the transport companies on a warning strike. The strike was aimed against possible layoffs at state-owned companies in the private sector and affected four million vehicles in the Athens metropolitan area - according to tradition, buses, trams, metro and suburban railway strike on different schedules. In addition, the strikers expressed their solidarity with workers in Ireland, which has recently followed the example of Greece and has applied for credit support of the EU and the IMF in exchange for stringent cost cutting.

Particular criticism of the demonstrators was subjected to an agreement by the Greek government with the creditors of the EU and the IMF, as well as budget for 2011, which involves billions of dollars in spending cuts next.

From 1 January 2011 the Greek government plans to increase fares on public transport by 30-50 percent.This was stated by Secretary General of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and communication networks in Greece Haris Tsiokas.According to him, this decision is the first step in the optimization of transport. Currently, the usual ticket for public transport in Athens is 1 euro. Validated it once, so the ticket can be used within one and a half hours, without limitation transplanting from one vehicle to any other.

It is also planned to reduce staff of all transport companies metropolitan area Attica, currently has 11,850 people. 2 thousand of them should be sent to retirement, and from 800 to thousands of people relocated to other public services.The amount of additional payments to the base salary will be limited to 8 percent of salary.

Currently, the various benefits by nearly 40 percent increase the size of the average wage in the industry, which, despite the losses of companies ranged from 3 thousand to 4.6 thousand euros per month.

Also on Thursday continued three-day strike of dock workers that has left dozens of large islands with no ferry service. Strike deadline expired at the spotzu.

As reported on Thursday the country's leading trade unions on December 15 in Greece held a general strike against the policy of the daily cost reductions.