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Greek Cleaners 1 - 0 Troika
Having approved the so-called 'democratization of the public service' law, which reinstated 13,000 Greek civil servants, Troika officials expressed their dismay,
"this is clearly against the spirit of reform agreements with the troika of the IMF, European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission."
Nevertheless, Greek cleaners across the nation are celebrating....
Cleaners from Greece’s ministry of finance, laid off in 2013 under the country’s austerity program, on Monday celebrate a new law that gives them back their jobs along with those of thousands of other public-sector staff. The cleaners had been protesting since the layoffs - in an action known as the longest demonstration in Greek histor - setting up a camp that became a symbol for those who feel the poor have borne the brunt of the crisis.
Greece’s new prime minister Alexis Tsipras received some of the protesters at his office on Thursday, after parliament passed legislation giving the cleaners their jobs back. Syriza’s decision to rehire the cleaners resonates with many Greeks, but the government’s wider moves to reinstate laid-off public-sector workers has angered Greece’s creditors, who see it as a reversal of economic reforms.
* * *
But, as KeepTalkingGreece reports, not everyone is happy...
She sat in front of the television set Monday morning and watched the party of the cleaners who have been hired again by the Finance Ministry. She watched the smiling faces of the 595 women who had been protesting outside the ministry in downtown Athens for 20 months. She watched deputy finance minister Nadia Valavani bringing them sweets and stating “I do not know what they are owed, if they realize themselves that the workers’ movement owes to them in a very difficult time. I don’t know if they realize what each of us personally owes to them ….” and some other stuff Eleni did not quite understood. She didn’t care. She felt tears flooding her eyes and envy biting her heart. She looked around at the small living room full with bedsheets and pillows, and children’s’ clothes. She wished, she was a fired cleaner at the Greek administration, she wished, she a cleaner’s job for 500 euro. She wished, she could have shared the festive mood. But she couldn’t.
Monday morning: Protesting cleaners and Public Administration Minister Katrougalos
Eleni is 55 years old and without income since March 2014, when together with her husband, 59, decided to close down the small business they operated for the last 12 years: a mini market in one of the suburbs of Athens. Until 2010, the mini market had a daily turnover of 1,600 euro. Then the economic crisis came and turnover started to drop day by day, month by month. By middle of 2013, the shop could not cash more than 150 euro per day.
Debts to state and social security had already mounted, the same did the unpaid bills to utilities and suppliers who suddenly demanded payments in advance.
The low middle class world of Eleni and her husband had collapsed. Together with their four children 14-22 years old, the couple moved to the 2-bedroom apartment of her mother.
Eleni and and husband hoped to find new jobs. But the reality was hard “Getting a job in times of crisis is impossible, mostly due to our age!” she says.
But Eleni does not give up hope. She attends Computer courses offered by the Municipality, she has applied to enter Employment Agency’s (OAEED) short-term programs for unemployed, funded by the EU.
“Honestly, I don’t care what these programs are and the majority of them are crap,” Eleni says .”Main thing is I do something, I bring some money home and I don’t go crazy.” These programs are scheduled to last 5 months, the attendees receive 450-500 euro per month, payment is done after the courses have ended. Then they are free to return to a labor market that has no job offering for them.
“At our age? We’ve been thrown to Kaiadas*!” Eleni says with a deep bitterness in her voice. She feels still strong to work. She currently seeks one or several jobs as a cleaner in offices or as caregiver to elderly. Her only skills in this “profession” is the experience she had with her own mother when she was severely sick and her cleaning skills as housewife and mother.
“Money has to come in. One of my sons got just recently a grotty part-time job for 250 euro, no security whatsoever, of course. I still have two children at school, third son is still in the army.”
Eleni is just an example of the many unemployed women of the Greek private sector. She does not belong to any union or political party. In a country with no benefits or any kind of aid for the long unemployed. Eleni is just an example of the many jobless middle-aged women who still need at least 10 working years to go into retirement. Eleni is just a number in the ELSTAT statistics showing that 21.5% of women 45-64 are unemployed and have mostly no chance to ever return to labor market.
Eleni has no private connections to powerful or well-situated people to get her a job in the old Greek style. She is left on her own.
And then here is Maria. Divorced. 49 years old, three children 26-29 years old. She got fired from the restaurant she was working for last ten years in 2012. Meanwhile, she lives on food and some basic needs packages from the charities. She occasionally cleans a home here and another there, maybe jumps-in to take care for a bed-ridden elderly in the neighborhood, when the caregiver has day off. She is too young to go in retirement, has not enough social security stamps for access to health care. Her two daughters and the son have low paid jobs and live with their own families. Maria shares an apartment and costs with her partner. She is seriously considering to return to her village that she left when she was 25.
“I could live in the old family home. At least, I can grow some vegetables there, have some chicken… I don’t know… I may find some job in the area as a cleaner or caregiver,” she says adding with a laughter “Or just lay down and die.”
She says too that she got envy about the cleaners and the political and media support they had during their long protest. “Ehm… the cleaners have a lobby. I wish, I had one too,” she says with the same bitterness in her voice like Eleni.
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Print baby print!
I can't wait till the whore riots. Yum yum gimmie some!
I thought the Troika agreed to stop using the term "Troika"
[PS: Shouldn't they be breaking windows instead of cleaning them? Krugman is gonna be pissed...]
My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can't believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do... www.jobs-review.com
The solution to all this bullshit : stay in the euro. Default on all debts. They can't kick you out of the EU nor Euro.. so you stick it to them... COME ON...
It's the only hope to break the EU...and then maybe it all finally unwinds.
You certainly live up to your nasty name.
Maybe one day you'll grow up to be an effective troll.
Keep trying.
"No...no.. no.. money not here" -- Consuela
They cannot have both. And kicked out of the Euro they can be for sure.
The best damn drama on the internet; Good on them tho.
Did someone say Drachma?
Zimbabwe economic policy going forward.
How are they going to pay them?
With Windex. It works on zits too.
Russia will make money available to pay workers. Russia will not make money available to pay debts to banks. The existing Greek banks must be allowed to fail when the IMF is defaulted. New banks will spring up.
Rags to riches.
90% of the bailout funds went to pay principal and interest on the dead beat creditors who can't suffer the consequences of their bets
priorities
people > banks
that's one big pussy riot
Hey, aren't they the same ones we see on AFF, who are just a mile away and want to do you?
My word, and the conventional wisdom is that Americans are fat? Bunch of Greek Heifers.
It's Ponzi all the way down. Madoff got hosed.
This guy made off OK.
Frank DiPascali Jr., Madoff Aide Who Pleaded Guilty in Fraud, Dies at 58, STEVE LOHRMAY 10, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/business/frank-dipascali-jr-madoff-aid...
COOL GLOVES - WONDER WHY RED ONES?
The hammer and sickel, replaced with mop and bucket
The peoples' flag is deepest red;
it shrouded off their martyred dead;
and ere their limbs grew stiff and cold;
their hearts' blood died its every fold.
So thats the big plan? More government spending to buy votes.
"So thats the big plan? More government spending to buy votes."
It works doesn't it?
As long as there is other peoples money around.
The big plan is to print and issue Drachmas and circulate them in parallel with the Euro. Workers get paid in Drachmas and shops must accept them. Those Drachmas are exchangeable at par for Russian Rubles - but only as long as Russia is pleased with Greece's behaviour. Greece steps out of line and - poof - exchangeability is history.
Something similar to the Gibraltar Pound and the Euro which circulate side by side. Gibraltar Pound is convertible into British Pounds until it isn't.
1) Syriza promised these policies and got the votes to show the finger to the Troika. So they are not buying votes, they are simply keeping their promises and putting people over banks.
2) As said above for morons like you, more than 90% of the loan goes to pay the interest and principal of the debt. The Troika wants ZERO losses on its own banks for making those loans, and Greeks, who have already suffered with over 25% unemplyment and miserable wages for over 5 years, to suffer for another 15 more. What do you really want? The Greeks to live like this for another decade? How the fuck will the Greek economy ever recover and these people will get out of misery under austerity?
3) The money is not someone else's, the money belongs to the PEOPLE OF GREECE, if they stop paying it to the bankers. The Greeks predominantly voted for Syriza to stop the Troika from destroying the country, and the employment of these workers was among the symbolic promises of Syriza before the elections.
4) How many more times do we have to go through this so that you fucking finally get it?
5) I know it hurts deeply that while your charlatan Austrian heroes are nowehere to be seen as they are busy making money in the casino, leftists are the ones defending the people against the financial oligarcy. Syriza is such a great example of how much nonsense all that fuss here and in other Austrian blogs on "the poor working people" really is, as we watch once again the myth of the self-serving greed justified as "serving everyone" collapses in front of our eyes. And this is why most of the lot here has gone mad in the last two months, and have been spitting shit about Syriza and Greeks with their elementary economic and political understanding. At the end of the day, these are high quality idiots who think Obama is a socialist, SYRIZA is just another scam of bankers, capitalism never existed and a whole lot of similar hogwash.
Clinton's Cleaners have a totally different Job Description.
Poof and you're GONE.
why are the two cleaners in picture one fighting?
The vote for shop steward ended in a tie.
One of them is actually going to have to clean windows and ride the bus to work.
She has the only mop...
What's really sickening is the idea of all these people reduced to begging for the opportunity to clean someone's home or office. I can just imagine the contemptible cruelty felt by those who are continuously beseiged by these desperate individuals. How they must laugh at the poor souls groveling before them. What fun it must be to offer them a few pennies for work you wouldn't do yourself for thousands.
If there is ever a time when socialism needs to prove its worth, it is in such a crisis as this. Everyone should suffer. Everyone should have to downsize and accept less. The very idea of people desperately seeking to worm their way into the protected class of government employee while the people who pay the bills starve is utterly disgusting to me.
Unfortunately, the lesson being drawn is that it is the evil foreigners who are preventing the noble government from rescuing everybody from their distress rather than affixing blame upon the government which went wild on itself and its grandiose schemes well beyond the true capacity of Greece to bear.
My people perish for want of knowledge. God help them all.
Do they enjoy brooms up their ass too ????
The officer's uniforms look perfectly spiffy!
7 Highly Effective Habits of CENTRAL PLANNERS:
1. CAMPAIGN on "curing all ills" with Centralized Government Planning (CGP)
2. Promise EVERYONE EVERYTHING
3. Rehire a group which makes good OPTICS (like cleaning ladies) to "prove" that CGP is working
4. Go further into DEBT to make token payments to optic groups while ENRICHING POLITICIANS & BANKERS
5. FIRE Cleaning Ladies once they are no longer in the news and debt money is gone
6. BLAME current failures on previous (or any other) administration
7. Go to Step 1 and REPEAT process
repudiate and leave, guys. jeezus.
And welcome some Russian and Chinese ships to your ports, just to dissuade the inevitable fuckery.
Tsipras: The toilets are to dirty to use. who will clean them? Silence ...Damn it rehire the cleaning ladies and fire someone else.
They change the bed sheets after every hour too....keep the Whorehouses open..now that is where the money is..
People scrambling like rats to get into low-paying but "safe" government jobs.
"Everyone's a winner baby that's the truth..."
I'll never make light of these people's plight. What's happening to them is not their fault - they haven't done anything wrong. I'm talking about the average man, woman working day in and day out just to earn a living, put a roof over their heads, food on the table and pay their bills. I'm just wondering how Americans will react when the next financial crisis brings this same misery to our shores.
ZH thanks for this. It is good to be reminded of what this politician-inflicted disaster is doing to actual individuals.
And it is a politician-inflicted disaster, not one caused by a great many of those whose lives have been destroyed by the politicians who, for bribes, benefits and the chance to be part of the mob running Europe, signed up to the euro and then kept Greece in the euro when the destructive effects on the Greek economy and society were and are plain for all to see.