Activities halted on Wednesday as transport workers, hospital doctors, school teachers together with construction workers joined a nationwide strike to protest squeezed living standards and demand higher pay in Greece. The protests coincide with the government submitting its 2025 budgets to the parliament as the nation embarked on a-24-hour nationwide strike. Public and private sector workers walked off the job as part of the labor action that disrupted public transport and left ferries connecting the Greek islands with the mainland tied up in port. Medical staff at state-run hospitals and teachers were among those who joined the strike, which was called by labor unions to protest the high cost of living and demand collective wage agreements that were scaled back during Greece’s nearly decade-long financial crisis that began in 2010. Around 12,000 protesters marched through central Athens, while another 5,000 demonstrated in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city. “We want to showcase the rage and resentment of salaried employees for what is happening to their income,” said Yannis Panagopoulos, head of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece, the umbrella union representing private sector workers. “We have no other way to be able to cope with the high cost of living other than with an increase to our income. But our incomes remain frozen in the bailout era,” he said. Many Greeks saw their wages and pensions slashed in return for bailouts worth 280 billion euros ($297 billion) during a 2009-2018 debt crisis which shaved a quarter off Greece’s economic output and nearly pushed the country out of the eurozone. With the Greek economy recovering steadily since 2018, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ center-right government has raised the minimum monthly gross wage four times since taking power in 2019 to 830 euros a month and has promised to raise it further to 950 euros by 2027. However, the Greeks say the rises are not enough and their salaries — which still fall behind the European average — do not last them a month as energy, food and housing costs escalate faster. “Prices and rents have skyrocketed, while wages are at a low point,” read the strike poster of GSEE, Greece’s largest private sector union, which called for immediate and substantial pay rises for workers struggling with what it said was an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis. GSEE — which represents some 2.5 million workers in Greece — also asked for government action against oligopolies whom it blamed for concerted practices that drove the cost of basic goods higher. Mitsotakis acknowledged on Monday there was room for improvement concerning wages and GDP per capita and reiterated a call to the EU to help with discrepancies in power prices that he said saw Greeks paying far more than other countries in the bloc. The strike comes as the government submits later on Wednesday its final 2025 budget to the 300-seat parliament for debate before a vote due next month. The draft budget sees economic growth of 2.3% next year and higher tax revenues thanks to expanding digital payments and booming property sales.
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