With lorry drivers all over Greece on strike for a mere three days, the minister of transports ordered them to break their strike, threatening to recall their permits if they did otherwise. Two days after that, and with truck drivers keeping their ground, the Greek government has employed the country's military forces to take their place and thus resume the distribution of goods and fuel throughout the country. As of yesterday army trucks are delivering fuel to airports and gas stations and somehow this is supposed to be restoring "stability" in markets and transportations.
My fellow citizens who are relieved to be filling up their tanks and finding fresh apricots on the shelves of their supermarket, should think twice. They may be heading to the nearest beach on their cars and motorbikes but they are probably missing the fact that this is being done at the cost of workers' rights being stepped on in the most audacious of ways.
This is a government, socialist only by name (like so many, nowadays), that first cuts down salaries and pensions to almost half of the population, then sits and stares at prices going up at record stagflation rates and decides to take action only when it is about further attacking worker's rights according to the dictates of the IMF. The new law -the reason for the lorry drivers being on strike- asks for a change in the status of a so-called "restricted access profession". For more than 35 years, in order to become a lorry driver someone had to pay a lot of money to get a permit that he could later transfer at will and at a price he decided. The government -aka its IMF "dictators"- have now called against this "unjust" system and are attempting a "reformation" (and you have to excuse words within double quotes but they are necessary). The new system will thus "open" the profession by rendering the permits so cheap that they become obsolete. Justice? Well, not quite. What the new law says is that the permit will be almost free to give away as long as someone has set up a "transport company" under which designated drivers will be working on a contract. What the law actually aims at, is opening the way for big food and fuel companies into a new market, safeguarded until yesterday by the lorry driver unions. Because that is exactly what is going to happen. In the past, individuals may have struggled for a permit that, given the organization of the union, guaranteed them a living but there is no chance for a middle or lower-class (if those still exist) guy to be able to start up a company. On the other hand, big companies have their way paved for them by the state. They won't even have to pay for the permits before setting up their own transport branches that will hire the ex drivers who will be unable to work without a contract.
Now does this sound like a "justified" "opening" of the profession to you?
What it really is, is a ruthless attempt to restructure the transportations sector from being limited-profit free-entrepreneurial into an oligopolistic trust with great profit margins for big companies, with the subsequent abasement of the workers.
What is even more striking is the credulity and submission with which the media have supported the government's decisions, first to force the lorry drivers to end their strike and then to bring the soldiers on the streets delivering gasoline as if Greece has suddenly become North Korea. No talk about workers' rights abuse, no talk about dangerous connotations whatsoever.
But the worst part comes when one sees the public opinion dozing off in this media-administered apathy. As the country is experiencing cataclysmic changes in every possible aspect of everyday life, people are actually backing up the government by demanding this strike be over. That is, they are granting officials the right to undermine the future of thirty thousand people, being too short-sighted to see that what happens to the lorry drivers today, will be happening to them tomorrow.
One fifth of the Greek population is living on the verge of poverty. 18% of Greeks will not visit a doctor for not being able to afford it, some 20% have reduced their spending on everyday goods like bread and milk, but in the end what really matters is that the "poor Greeks" get to have a five-day, well-deserved, overpriced summer vacation which is being ruined by them bloody truck drivers. So "bring on the troops", "stop the strike", "put them behind bars" for wanting to maintain their working status. Everything is acceptable as long as people can ride their cars off to a nearby beach.
Well, it's not!
I hope -for the sake of us all- that people start thinking with a clearer mind once the summer is over and sunbathing will no longer be their first and only priority.
Until then and with the lorry drivers holding firm at a brave standstill, it looks like everyone else is going the wrong way.
