Greek workers staged a 24-hour strike today forcing the transport system to a standstill in protest against the government's intensified austerity drive to secure aid to save the debt-laden country from bankruptcy.
About 1,000 members of Communist group MAS marched to parliament chanting "Resist" and "Plutocracy should pay for this crisis" as part of the first big nationwide rallies since June when daily protests ended in bloody clashes with police.
Another 6,000 students, some carrying black flags and wearing teargas masks, and teachers joined them outside parliament, with union members expected to join them later. There was a big riot police deployment.
Striking taxi drivers and bus, metro and rail workers meant commuters had to use their own cars, triggering kilometres-long traffic jams and stranding tourists at hotels in Athens' ancient city centre. Unions said more strikes were planned.
"The situation is dramatic, all major streets are jammed," said one traffic police official, who declined to be named. An air traffic controller stoppage delayed 100 flights by up to four hours and dozens more in an out of Greece were cancelled.
Former European Commissioner and attorney general Peter Sutherland, said he sees a period of "severe restructuring" in Greece.
Mr Sutherland said contagion effects from the Greek crisis were affecting the euro and could damage the "credibility and borrowing capacity for other countries".
Mr Sutherland told RTÉ's Morning Ireland he was not speaking in his capacity as chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
After European Union and IMF inspectors made clear they were losing patience over the government's failure to meet the targets of a bailout, the cabinet agreed yesterday to front-load austerity measures.
Policymakers and economists fear a Greek default on its €340 billion debt could set global markets tumbling and push other vulnerable euro zone members like Italy and Spain over the edge, potentially splitting the currency area.
As well as cutting pensions and extending a real estate tax rise, the cabinet put 30,000 civil servants in "labour reserve" this year, cutting their pay to 60 per cent and giving them 12 months to find new work in the state sector or lose their jobs.
"This is a policy we do not tolerate, we do not want. We are in continuous, total, permanent opposition to it," said Yannis Panagopoulos, president of private sector employees union GSEE, speaking on state NET TV.
With the economy expected to contract by at least 5 per cent this year - after a 4.4 per cent slump in 2010 – and unemployment at 16 per cent and rising, most Greeks hold little hope austerity measures will help the nation emerge from crisis.
"We are living in terror that we may lose our jobs, our lives. Even if these lay-offs are necessary, we are not being treated like humans," said Costas Andrianopoulos (32) who works at the National theatre.
"They cut our wages and our pensions and we took it. But I don't believe any more that any of this is for the good of the country. We'll be sacrificed for nothing. We can't avoid default, we have no hope."
The conservative opposition, which has a slim lead over prime minister George Papandreou's Socialists in opinion polls and has called for snap elections, maintained its refusal to cooperate with the government, which has irked EU leaders.
The country remains bitterly divided between private sector workers who say a bloated state bureaucracy is strangling Greeks and public servants who say the biggest problems are political corruption and tax evasion.
The new measures followed warnings from the "troika" of EU and IMF inspectors that Greece must stop missing the targets of its five-year bailout plan or miss the €8 billion aid tranche it needs to pay salaries next month.
After more than a year of Athens consistently falling behind on its commitments, the head of an EU taskforce helping Athens said today he now saw a greater willingness by Greek officials to put the reforms in place.
But troika officials, wary of Greek government inertia, will be closely scrutinising the latest proposals to see if they are sufficient to plug fiscal gaps and can be implemented swiftly, ahead of meetings between Venizelos and finance ministers and senior IMF officials in Washington this week.
Government officials expected the measures to be passed by parliament in the next two to three weeks after they have been discussed with the troika team which is expected to return to Athens early next week to complete their review.
Reuters