Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Garbage piling up Greek cities as sanitation workers' protest continues

Tones of garbage are piling up in Athens and other major cities as a nationwide protest against job cuts called by unions representing municipal sanitation workers entered its second week on Monday.


The government and strikers have failed to reach a deal in several rounds of talks, fuelling public health concerns especially amid rising temperatures.

An Athens prosecutor launched on Monday a probe into whether anyone should be charged of putting into risk public health, Greek national news agency AMNA reported, as the latest symbolic march of protesters in the center of Athens ended inconclusive.

Greece's local authority staff union federation POE-OTA launched the protest last week, after a court ruled against the new extension to late 2017 of the short- term contracts of more than 10,000 people working in trash collection in municipalities throughout Greece.

POE-OTA responded with work stoppages, strikes, and sit-in protests at landfills, demanding permanent employment of workers to replace the fixed-term contracts, which put workers in risk of being fired in a country suffering chronic unemployment of about 25 percent of the working force.

However, the proposal the Interior Ministry submitted to the parliament on Monday for hiring of 2,500 permanent municipal sanitation workers, was immediately rejected by POE-OTA as insufficient.
  [Xinhua/China]
27/6/17

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