Greek public sector to join Nov. strike

A woman holds the Greek flag during an anti-austerity protest in Athens (file photo).

Greece’s public sector union says it will join a November general strike, planned by the country’s private sector, to protest harsh government™s austerity measures.

The country™s main public sector union ADEDY has announced its participation in the 24-hour walk out, planned by the private sector union GSEE, on November 6.

This will be the second general strike in the debt-wracked nation in less than four months.

The union says the main purpose of the move is to voice opposition to the government’s fresh redundancies and lay-offs in the public sector.

It claims that the government is under the influence of its so-called international lenders namely the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank.

Meanwhile, Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras has announced that the country™s foreign lenders are expected to agree in December on how to meet its 2014 funding shortfall.

Athens was first granted a 110-billion-euro ($145 billion) bailout by the so-called troika of international lenders in May 2010.

Another 130-billion-euro ($170 billion) rescue package was approved in February 2012, which had been designed to see it through 2014 but a funding gap has emerged for the second half of the year.

Thousands of Greeks have been staging protests across the country against the harsh austerity measures imposed as a result of the two bailouts.

Greece has been at the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and is experiencing its sixth year of recession, while harsh austerity plans have left tens of thousands of people without jobs.

Many Greek workers are currently unemployed, banks are in a shaky position, and pensions and salaries have been slashed.

The European financial crisis began in early 2008. Insolvency now threatens heavily debt-ridden countries such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Spain.

The worsening debt crisis has forced EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered massive demonstrations in many European countries.

MAM/MAM

Copyright: Press TV