Strike Out

Greece appears to be the country of strikes. Granted, some strikes may be worthy, but it seems these days if a clerk breaks her fingernail in a public office, they all go on strike. Since I moved here, every facet of business has been on strike at least once, usually more. Transportation, banks, teachers, media - you name it.

Over the past couple of weeks, several sectors have gone one one or two day strikes, but the bank workers have been on strike for almost two weeks now. One of the main reasons for the recent strikes are the government's new plans for social security, along with doing away with "permanent" positions (ie. you work for certain places, your job is permanent, no matter how much you suck at it). Not being Greek, I haven't payed real close attention to what has been going on, and for the most part strikes just offer annoying news stories. But this time, it is getting serious. You can't do any banking at all, and ATMs are running out of cash. This time it has gone past an annoyance - and despite my liberal views, at this point I am on the verge of saying "I don't care if they fucking flog you with wet noodles every goddamn day at the bank, get your lazy asses back to work". I'm sorry, but I feel no sympathy for people who bitch about the potential to lose your job if you suck at it. Gee whiz, but isn't that the way shit is supposed to work? And it is about time the Greek government took such measures, because I am SO tired of Greek public workers who don't know shit about their jobs nor take the effort to do their jobs with any level of competency (I won't go into all my experiences, because that would be a LONG boring rant of things that STILL aren't solved after being here for three years).

I don't really know enough about economics, so I am not sure I understand why Greeks strike so much when Americans don't. Yes, Americans DO strike from time to time, but it is nothing like the frequency of strikes here.