Slashing salaries

It certainly counts as the most controversial issue in the debate over the Greek government’s austerity measures – the axing of the so-called δώρα or gifts or holiday bonus from the pay packets of public and private sector employees.

Today, Economy Minister Yiorgos Papakonstantinou announced the abolition of Christmas, Easter and summer holiday bonuses in the public sector, also known as 13th and 14th salaries, for those earning above 3,000 euros a month and will be capped at 1,000 euros for those earning less.

For some civil servants, the loss to income per annum runs into the thousands. Pensioners have also been hit: their 13th and 14th pension payments have now been replaced by a flat-rate payment of 700 euros (gross). In addition, out of their remaining pensions will be deducted a “solidarity levy for the the poor” (known in Greek as the ΛΑΦΚΑ) of 7-9 percent.

As all public sector salaries have been frozen until 2014, there’s going to be a lot less money in civil servant pockets for the time being.

In Greece, all employees are effectively paid their annual income in 14 instalments: twelve payments every month; one payment at Christmas (equivalent to a month’s salary or 25 days’ pay), and a half payment at Easter and summer (each equivilant to a half-month’s salary or 15 days’ pay).

In recent weeks, the 13th and 14th salaries have come in for special attention in the world’s press, who invariably have presented them as yet another example of the wastefulness of the bankrupt Greek state, a throwback to an archaic socialist past, specifically to Andreas Papandreou’s first period in office in the 1980s.

For example, my colleague and friend John Psaropoulos wrote in the Irish Times on April 30:

“Local media have reported a series of draconian measures said to be included in the package. Among them is the complete severance of Easter, summer and Christmas bonuses in the public sector, amounting to two extra monthly salaries a year. The government had already trimmed these by 30 per cent in the last austerity package, announced in early March. Their removal would be a historic irony, as they, along with much of the welfare state, were introduced in the early 1980s by then prime minister Andreas Papandreou, father of current prime minister George Papandreou.”

However, the reality is somewhat different and less dramatic. These payments are much older, in part dating back in law to the immediate post-war period.

It’s generally neglected too that that these payments come on top of what count among the lowest wages and salaries in the European Union, and all this in a country where retail prices are generally higher than in the rest of the EU.

Nor is the situation unique to Greece. Employees are also paid in 14 tranches in Spain and Portugal.

Origins

Before the Second World War, holiday bonuses, particular for Easter, formed part of the customary law in certain localities and was contained in the collective agreements in certain industries. According to Labour historian Giannis Kordatos, in the early days of the Greek revolution, in April 1822, officials in the interim administration in liberated Corinth requested an Easter payment (Kordatos, History of the Greek Workers Movement, Athens, 1956, p. 29).

Their gradual legalisation of these payments dates back to an extremely difficult period in Greek history. In 1941, during the wartime occupation of the country, the collaborationist government passed a decee (310/1941) ordering that the Easter gift was to be paid wherever it had been customary.

Some months after the ending of the occupation, and as the country was descending into a bloody civil war, the government passed a law (539/1945, article 2, paragraph 1), stipulating that employees were entitled to a paid annual leave.

In the early 1950s, legislation was passed (Law 1901/1951, Compulsory Law 1777/1951 and Law 2053/1952) allowing the ministers of finance and labour could “jointly decide to give extraordinary financial support at Christmas and Easter, either in cash or in kind”. This practice soon became widespread in the public and the private sector.

The Easter and Christmas “gifts” were renamed allowances or bonuses in 1980, under a law (1082/1980, article 1) enacted by the New Democracy (conservative) government.

A year later, the new Pasok government passed a law (19040/1981) specifying how the holiday allowances were to be calculated and allocated.

Part of the salary

In place legally and paid out for almost 60 years and in custom for much longer, Greek employees and pensioners understandably and justifiably see the 13th and 14th salaries as an integral part of their income. They compensate for Greece’s comparatively low incomes and the absence of a proper welfare system.

In one article in conservative Kathimerini on the history of the payments, it was argued that they were “a belated application [in Greece] of the Keynesian spirit adopted since the Great Depression of 1929 in the US and Europe”.

That’s the real irony: seeing a measure introduced to help the economy in a time of crisis abolished during another crisis.

According to labour law professor Alexis Mitropoulos, since their introduction, in 1945 and 1951/52, no Greek government or private company has questioned the existence of the bonuses.

“The 14th salary (the Easter bonus and holiday pay) and the 13th salary (Christmas bonus) were designed to strengthen the purchasing power of employees. It contributed to the increase in commercial trade and the alternative consumer behaviour on the part of employees, pensioners and the unemployed.”

He expected that their abolition “would lead to the dramatic proletarianisation of wide strata of employees and pensioners”.

The effects of reduced spending power on what’s left of Greeece’s small time retailers will be immense.

Consequences

When the additional salary payments were legalised, in 1945 and 1951/52, communism held out a better future to impoverished Greeks. Perhaps by legalising them, rightwing governments hoped to kill off worker demands through kindness, much in the same way that Bismarck tried to defeat the social democrats by setting up the social welfare state.

Although the local media had claimed that the 13th and 14th salaries in the private sector were also in danger, they seem safe … for the time being. But how many times have we heard the government tell us that they were done with announcing austerity measures? I’ve a strong suspicion that in a few months the troika and employers will argue that the labour market requires standardisation. They’ll see if they can wrestle the bonus salaries from the public sector first; then we’re next.

Now that the neoliberals feel safe that there is no alternative to the wonderful, free-market world that they have created for themselves, they feel safe in destroying what they see as undeserved privilages. At the same time, they’ll continue to demand dizzying bonuses for themselves and their friends, despite the financial havoc that their system has created worldwide.

Sources:

• Christina Kopsin, “Tο Δώρο Xριστουγέννων“, Kathimerini, 1 January 2006
• Spyros Frementitis, “Ανάσα για τον εργαζόμενο με παράδοση δεκαετιών”, Eleftheropia, 21 February 2010

Spreading a falsehood: the posthumous placing of a firebomb in Alexis Grigoropoulos’ hands

The truth is often one of the first causalities of war. The same applies to the recent Athens riots: not that these resembled a war (although many would argue that they did), but because truth fell victim to the dissemination of outright lies, mainly thanks to the media.

The lie is that Alexis Grigoropoulos and his friends had thrown or were about to throw a petrol bomb at the two special police offices in their car.

One might question why it is necessary to write about something that never happened.

It is important to write about it, because the idea that the youths on that fateful night were about to throw a petrol bomb at the police – thus putting their lives in grave danger – is used by many to legitimise the police killing of a 15-year-old boy.

Today, the newspaper I work for received a letter on the riots that contained the following paragraph:

From the immediate press reports, before ideological blinkers took  hold, it appeared that the child threatened the police officers (and others) with deadly force (the petrol bomb). As such their action in shooting him dead, whilst unfortunate, was entirely reasonable. The murder charges appear to be grossly excessive and the chance of conviction to be zero. The police officer is to be pitied as a victim here. The matter was clearly one of self-defence at least if not justifiable homicide. If I were expected to judge the officer’s actions in hindsight, I would be far more alarmed about the ‘stray bullet’ hypothesis than of any action to shoot to kill in the circumstances.

The letter-writer made otherwise very valid points. However, as I told him, I could not agree to publish the above paragraph, as it contradicts much of what has emerged about that night.

I don’t think the letter-writer meant any offence and seemed sure that he had read the firebomb claim in one of the initial BBC reports on the shooting.

The BBC report contained no such claim, but some other news sources did.

False reports

Indeed, the claim that Grigoropoulos threw or had threatened to throw a bomb at the police was contained in some, but not all, of the initial reports on the killing which appeared on Sunday, December 7

These reports were:

• AFP, December 7 (as published in The Australian).

DOZENS of rioters have rampaged through central Athens after police shot dead a teenage boy who attempted to throw a petrol bomb at a patrol car, police officials said.

The youths smashed shop windows and set fire to refuse containers after the shooting, which took place in the traditionally left-wing Exarchia district of the Greek capital.

“Hundreds of them hit the streets, probably for revenge … Dozens of police units are gathering to try to control the situation,” said a police official, who declined to be named.

Tear gas filled the narrow streets of the busy neighbourhood and restaurants closed their shutters, witnesses said.

Police said there were no arrests or reports of injuries so far.

The shooting took place after a group of around six youths started pelting a police vehicle with stones. When one tried to throw a petrol bomb, a policeman shot him in the stomach, said the official.

Given its detail, the AFP report is, I believe, the source of the claim, and although it isn’t dated precisely, I believe it appeared before 3am GMT on Sunday, December 7, when a very similar report, published by an Iranian agency, appeared:

• Press TV (Iran) report, published at 03:09:07 GMT on Sunday, December 7:

The shooting took place after a group of six youths started throwing stones at a police vehicle and when one of them tried to throw a petrol bomb, a policeman shot him, said a police official, who declined to be identified.

• Another much cited report was published by CNN on December 7:
  

A police statement about the boy’s death said the incident started when six young protesters pelted a police patrol car with stones. The 16-year-old boy was shot as he tried to throw a fuel-filled bomb at the officers, police said.

• A Radio France International report, dated December 7,

Police said the boy had been shot after a policeman fired into a crowd of people who had launched molotov cocktails at a police car.

• And similarly, Al Jazeera,  in a report timestamped 11:22 GMT, December 7, repeated the allegation:

Police said the teenager was shot in the traditionally left-wing Exarchia district of the Greek capital on Saturday after the boy tried to throw a firebomb at a patrol car.

What is most worrying about the Al Jazeera post is that it presents the firebomb claim as fact. The AFP report, on which it is clearly based, at least attributed “police officials” as a source.

The effect that this disinformation is clearly evident in the comments on the article on the Al Jazeera. The first three readers, clearly fuelled by the bomb lie, wrote:

“He was throwing a fire bomb! He deserved to be shot” – Miguel, Mexico

“The idiot tried to throw a firebomb at a patrol car. He got what he deserved.” – JB, United States

“If you’re throwing a deadly weapon … what do you expect? I believe the officer was worried for his own safety and did what he had to do. what was a fifteen year old boy doing with a fire bomb? – Scott, Canada

• Again, in a December 8 report datestamped 02:56 GMT on December 8, Al Jazeera repeated the allegation, again as fact:

The boy had tried to throw a firebomb at a police patrol car.

• And, also on December 8, CNN repeats the allegation:

A police statement about the teenage boy’s death said the incident started when six young protesters pelted a police patrol car with stones. The teen was shot as he tried to throw a petrol bomb at the officers, police said.

What did the other agencies say?

It is important to point out that other news agencies made no reference to the petrol bombs. They had no reason to as the initial police report made no such reference to a firebomb.

• This is what AP wrote on December 7:

Several hours after the incident, police issued a statement saying the patrol car, with two officers inside, was attacked by a group of 30 stone-throwing youths while patrolling the central district of Exarchia.

• The Athens News Agency, wrote on December 8:

According to the initial statement given by the two officers, the incident occurred shortly after 9:00 on Saturday night when a police patrol car responding to a call in the Exarhia district was surrounded by a gang of 30 youths that started throwing stones and bits of wood at them.

A falsehood spreads

The original December 7 CNN article was still online on December 15, when it was mentioned on the talk page of the Wikipedia article on the riots, 2008 Greek riots.

It has since disappeared. However, the claim remains on other CNN reports on the shooting, including the December 8 one mentioned above

The reference to the CNN claim in Wikipedia was first made on 11:01 (Greek time), on December 8. The source was the December 7 CNN article. The wording was:

A police statement stated that the teenager was killed while trying to throw a bomb at a police vehicle.

This statement, which was later reworded to

Police reports said the initial statement of the guard was that the shooting happened in self-defense, as the victim of the shooting was about to throw a molotov cocktail at the guards.

remained on Wikipedia until 22:06 (Greek time), December 14, when it was removed.

The claim in Greece

The claim was also published by a Greek English-language weekly newspaper, Athens Plus, which is owned by International Herald Tribune and Kathimerini:

In a letter to the editor published in the December 12 issue, Kerry Kay, from Kifissia, wrote:

… watching the media covering the killing of the 15-year-old boy, no one dared ask the question “What was a 15-year-old boy doing in the middle of the night attacking police cars with Molotov bombs?’’

Arguably, no one asked the question because a) the boy wasn’t carrying a bomb and b) the incident took place at 9pm and not in the middle of the night.

Surely, the Athens Plus should have exercised more editorial intervention in relation to this letter. It is simply irresponsible for an English-language weekly that is freely available to download and which is – judging by its readers’ letters – read by many Greeks abroad, to publish such unsubstantiated claims as fact, even in a reader’s letter.

Indeed, the letter contradicts the editorial line taken in the same issue:

The murder was not committed in the heat of battle between anarchists and riot police, where it could somehow be explained as a predictable accident. It came in the form of a police officer losing his temper and firing at a group of youngsters, who may or may not have taunted him and his partner when they drove by a bar in the anarchist stronghold of Exarchia.

Who is to blame?

It’s clear that the AFP report was based on the comments made by an unnamed police officer in the early hours of Sunday morning. AFP may have seen this information as a scoop, but surely report should have been based on official the police statement of the incident, which made no reference to petrol bombs, and not on the comments of an unnamed officer.

In any case, Epaminondas Korkoneas, the policeman who fired the fatal shots, also subscribes to the firebomb thesis. As a Reuters report, dated December 10, states:

A Greek policeman facing a murder charge for the shooting of a teenager testified to prosecutors on Wednesday that he fired warnings shots in self-defence when a gang of youths threw firebombs at him, a court source said.

The 37-year-old policeman, Epaminondas Korkoneas, said he did not realise that 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos had been hit by a ricochet bullet, the source told Reuters.

Why shouldn’t he? It seems to be his only defence, and judging by the letter mentioned at the beginning of this article and the many internet discussions taking place on the incident outside of Greece, the firebomb myth assures some that the killing was somewhat justified and the subsequent disturbances, which have very real causes, are completely illegimate.

Spreading unsubstantiated rumour so grave as this one could also have incited the violent reactions of demonstrators, particularly those abroad who were presented with the “firebomb fact” by the news agencies listed above.

News reporting should not just limit itself to reporting what actually happened, but also how what happened can be manipulated.

How can we explain the riots in Greece?

What led to the December riots in Greece?

It’s a question everyone’s been asking themselves since the unprecedented violence that erupted after the fatal police shooting of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos on December 6.

To outsiders, Greece appears to be a wonderful country: blue skies, wonderful beaches and fantastic food. And there’s the laid-back lifestyle. It all appears so tranquil, so they say.

The reality within Greece for many Greeks is somewhat different. This country is not a failed state, but it’s a highly dysfunctional one that, in recent years, has been plagued by disasters (the forest fires of 2007 and 2008) and political and economic scandals (Olympic overspending, the phone-tapping scandal, the post-7/7 mysterious abduction of a group of Pakistanis, the Zachopoulos affair, the Vatopaidi affair, etc etc.). Indeed, the scandals are so frequent that they all seem to blend into one continues battle between the media and public on the one hand and the government on the other to establish the facts.

Life is difficult for many and this was the case before the credit crunch. Wages are ridiculously low and prices outrageously high. Greeks love cafes yet this country is probably one of the most expensive places to buy a coffee in Europe. It’s also one of the most expensive places in the EU to buy clothing and footware. Rents are also high.

The ongoing protests have mainly been a student and schoolpupil affair. Greek schoolchildren, particularly those who live in the big cities (ie Athens) are an unhappy lot. Most attend state schools during the day where they learn very little. In the evenings, the go to private cram schools (frontistiria) to study all subjects, not just foreign languages. Some teenagers I spoke to spend 18 hours in these frontistiria, at great cost to their parents and to their general mental and physical well being.

It’s simply not healthy for children to spend 7 hours in school during the day and a further 3-4 hours in a cramming academy in the evening. They also have to find time to do homework as well.

Greek schoolchildren find themselves in being processed through a machine that is geared to produce nothing else but good university-entry exam results. In the vast majority of state secondary schools there are no extracurricular activities such as drama, music or sports. If anything in undertaken in this direction, then it is the responsibility of the schoolkids or their parents, who again have to pay for all this.

No wonder these children are full of anger.

Not only are they are overworked, but they face a bleak future. The aspire to go to university but know full well that very little awaits them once they finish their primary degrees. Even if they obtain a postgraduate degree — there are thousands of Greek postgrads in Italian, German, French and British universities — their job prospects are bleak.

This generation of Greeks is facing the reality that they will be worse off than their parents.

Many young Greeks want change. They are turning against the corrupt political system that their parents have supported since the end of the dictatorship in 1974. They all know the problems the country has but are not willing to tolerate them anymore.

They are fed up of the country’s rulers, especially those who seem to have inherited political office (such as Prime Minsiter Karamanlis).  The alternative, socialist Pasok, is equally unattractive for the same reasons (the Papandreou dynasty).

They are fed up with the endless political game that accompanies every scandal.

They are fed up with the same old faces in the windows on Greece’s bizarre TV “chat news”.

They are also fed up with the ever-decreasing value of the money in their pockets as a result of inflation.

They are also fed up at the wanton destruction of the environment and the government’s paying lip-service to ecology.

They are also fed up of the police.

The Greek Police are almost universally reviled in Greece. Even conservative voters have no respect for the force. Respect has to be earned and it appears to me that the Greek Police has not earned the respect of the population nor does it have any idea how it can earn this respect.

Distrust of the police goes back to the Junta years. The police was never fully democratised after the fall of the Junta.

Of course, they are baldly paid like all civil servants, they are badly trained and they are corrupt like the rest of the system.

Unless they make an attempt to engage in dialogue with the people they are supposed to be protecting (community policing), particularly in flashpoints like Exarchia, then nothing will change.

Neither will anything change as long as the police and state prosecutors remain the political tools of the government. They must show more determination in combating top-level government corruption.

Will anything change?

This is another question that people have been asking.

The youth and students are discontented. They know what the problems are, but the danger is that various micro-groups will try to channel this protest movement into demanding laughable, unrealistic and nebulous aims such as complete social revolution and/or the abolition of the state! That’s simply not going to happen in 2008. The protests will end up demanding everything and achieving absolutely nothing.

The protests might lead to a change in policing if that remained the key focus. But arguably, the police are merely a product of a bad system and are certainly not at the root of it.

Some young people have told me that the protests need to be far more creative (and, above all, peaceful) in order to produce change.

There also needs to be real dialogue in society about the problems facing the country, but not in the daily mainstream TV media chatnews format or through the microparties of the left.

I saw one creative example of that today. Through Facebook, a group called for a “mobbing” on the central Syntagma Square this afternoon around the city’s (second) Christmas tree. A few hundred turned up, and the police — green (riot) and blue (regular) — were there as well. The police were determined to protect the tree — fearing that it could be set on fire — so they circled it. It was exactly what the protesters wanted, as they were now able to encircle the police, all 30 of them.

What followed allowed for the protesters to express everything they wanted to express: the sang anti-police slogans, danced around the tree and the police. They laughed. They even dumped some old pigmeat at their feet.

Apart from the protesters, hundreds of Christmas shoppers looked on and very few of them seemed to have any objection to what was going on. As mentioned above, the police have very little respect from most of society.

Basically, they humiliated the representatives of a force using verbal means. Granted, it wasn’t too pleasant for the police concerned, but they took it well. They were clearly under orders not to escalate the situation in any way.

The whole event allowed for the venting of frustration. After an hour or so when everything that could have been said was said, most of the demonstrators moved away peacefully. So did the police. And the tree remained unscathed.

Had the police resorted to its normal heavy-handed tactics, the world news would be broadcasting another report on rioting in central Athens and possibly another burning tree.