Greek prison guards, EMTs strike; police stage protest
Some 100 police officers gathered in front of the building housing their union on Veranzerou Street in the Omonia district of central Athens on Wednesday morning to protest plans for their pension fund to participate in a voluntary bond swap, which the union rejected on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Greek prison guards announced that they would be staging rolling 24-hour strikes starting on Wednesday in reaction to over-crowding at the country’s correctional facilities and in demand of overtime pay for nigh-shift duty.
The prison guard strike is not expected to affect security, though visits and prisoner transfers will be put on hold for the duration of the stoppages.
In Thessaloniki, dozens of emergency medical technicians of the National First Aid Center (EKAB) staged a rally in front of the White Tower from 7.30-9.30 a.m. on Wednesday to protest the inclusion of their sector in a new nationwide civil service payroll scheme that will bring horizontal cuts to their salaries.
“We are already owed money from May and June, and now because of the retrospective cutbacks many of us will get paid just 100 euros a month for the next three months,» the head of Thessaloniki’s EKAB-2 unit, Antonis Antonopoulos, said.
