Transport strike held without skeleton staff
Wednesday’s 24-hour strike of Attica’s bus and trolley bus operator (OSY) and the Athens Urban Rail Transport Company (STASY), the two subsidiaries of the Athens Urban Transport Authority (OASA), demonstrated conclusively once again that laws which are passed are not necessarily implemented.
Among those laws is one which provides for the existence of minimum guaranteed service staff in case of a strike at public and utility enterprises. This law was heralded as a real reform, published in the Government Gazette on June 19, 2021 and at the end of August of the same year the issuance of the required ministerial decisions and circulars “unlocking” its implementation was completed.
Alas, this was not the case on Wednesday, with the responsibility for that lying with the management of the transport companies.
As a result, from August 2021, when the required decisions were issued, until March 2022, there has been no agreement between workers’ unions and the administrations regarding the availability of staff for the minimum guaranteed service, which means that the partial (30%) provision of the transport work will be guaranteed.
“The unions made known their decision for the 24-hour strike action at noon the day before,” the managing director of STASY, Thanassis Kottaras, who took office last June, told Kathimerini.
“This is despite the fact that until the announcement of their decision they had never publicly expressed their opposition to the draft law, which had been known since the beginning of August,” he said. Kottaras added that the previous management of STASY requested on April 28, 2022 that the Mediation and Arbitration Organization draft an agreement to determine the minimum guaranteed service personnel, as provided by law. However, the first phase of talks ended in July without agreement.
Kottaras said STASY will submit a second proposal which will fully ensure the safety of the network operation.
