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Athens News Agency: News in English, 12-02-06
CONTENTS
[01] Nationwide general strike on Tuesday
[01] Nationwide general strike on Tuesday
AMNA---A nationwide general strike has been called on Tuesday by the
country's two major umbrella federations representing the private and
public sector, ADEDY and GSEE respectively, "in the face of the storm
of new measures being advanced by the co-governance and the troika".
The two umbrella federations have also called on all working people to
take part in a protest demonstration in Athens' downtown Syntagma Square,
while the ADEDY (civil servants' supreme administrative council) executive
committee will meet again on Thursday to decide "further escalation of
the struggle".
In a press statement, ADEDY said that the agreement of the leaders of the
three political parties backing prime minister Lucas Papademos' interim
government "with the co-governance and the troika for the taking of new
painful measures, aiming at the reduction of the salary and non-salary
cost, the abolition of even the minimum wage in the private sector, the
new reduction in auxiliary pensions and the one-off retirement benefit,
layoffs of employees in the core and wider public sector, and further
reduction in state expenditures that will deprive the public services
(chiefly the health and education sectors) of resources intensifies the
vicious circle of recession -- which was nurtured the past two years
by the consecutive Memorandums -- and is leading the Greek society to
desperation".amna
It said that the Memorandum policy being exercised "is leading
with mathematical precision to the ruin of the Greek economy and the
destruction of the Greek society, turning working people into pariahs,
the unemployed and pensioners into poverty-stricken paupers, and deprives
the youth of any hope for a positive prospect. This policy has for some
time already exhausted the endurances of the Greek society and must be
reversed at all cost".
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