By P. Mandravelis

Do we really know what is going on at our ports? If we believe what various representatives of our production sectors have been saying, then we should be very worried indeed. This is not only because of the 15-20 percent price hikes on goods that the current situation is likely to provoke by Christmas time (also, increases of this level are a serious problem during this time of strained incomes). What is more worrying is that these price hikes will appear because some 350 dockworkers have decided to cut their overtime hours. It begs the question of what kind of increases we could expect if these workers were to stage a full-out strike.

Greece has long been operating “in the red” – economically and socially. We need only look at the example of Athens. Life is only bearable if it does not rain or snow, it is not too hot and there is not too much humidity. The roughly 4 million people living here can only function properly when the temperature is somewhere between 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) and 27 Celsius (80 Fahrenheit). Anything beyond this narrow range provokes a crisis. Of course the problem is neither the heat nor the rain nor the snow. When half the country’s population is concentrated in and around the capital and there is no adequate infrastructure in place to accommodate them, then all extreme weather conditions will create problems.

It is not only the capital which is stretched to its limits. The dockers’ refusal to work overtime, as they are accustomed to doing, reveals that our harbors are also in the red. This relatively tame industrial action has not only resulted in a pileup of thousands of containers at the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki but also caused a serious domino effect on the market and on citizens’ prosperity. Here is the “chaos theory” in full effect – a flutter of protest by workers in Piraeus sets off a storm on Ermou Street and other roads in central Athens.

Of course it is likely that projections of a 15-20 percent increase in prices at Christmas could constitute a rather convenient excess, for all concerned. The workers believe that such pressure will help promote their demands and the traders aim to exploit the situation for profit.

The truth is that even a 5 percent increase in prices would be excessive.

It may sound like a paradox in this strange country of ours but employees in other countries generally work an eight-hour day and only work overtime in exceptional circumstances. Here we have come to regard overtime as the norm and the strict eight-hour day as a recipe for disaster.