Same Time, Same Place - Greek Labor Unions Waste No Time In Scheduling Tomorrow's Athens Protest (2/22/12)
Submitted by Tyler Durden
That didn't take long. From Athens News: "Greece's two biggest labor unions, GSEE and ADEDY, on Tuesday announced plans for a protest rally on Syntagma Square on Wednesday. Starting at 4 p.m., the protest march is scheduled to coincide with a vote in Parliament on an emergency bill aimed at slashing state spending further through cuts to pensions and salaries, to which Greece is bound by its most recent bailout agreement." Parliaments is planning on further spending cuts? To what? Zero? Negative? And one can bet their bottom dollar, the tax collectors, already urged to increase their efficiency by 200%, will be present, and certainly not tripling their work output while peacefully consuming lungfulls of tear gas.
More:
Marches organised by the private-sector General Confederation of Greek Labour (GSEE) and its public-service counterpart ADEDY attracted more than 100,000 protesters to Syntagma Square on February 12, but attendance was considerably less at rallies held at the weekend.
"Demolishing labour regulations, new cuts in the main and supplementary pensions, the destroying the welfare state, the abolition of public services and new layoffs by the state are the new brutal measures which the coalition is in a rush to pass so that it can please the troika and creditors," a union announcement said on Monday.
Unions and small business associations warn that new cuts will dramatically cut the spending power of the average citizen and deepen the recession - a prediction already confirmed in part by official government projections.
And so the Greek GDP boosting efforts are off to an auspicious start, which will surely bring Greek Debt/GDP to 120.499999 by 2020.