A line that must not be crossed
Finance Minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou, a man who is on the front line in a country that is facing one of the biggest financial crises in the recent history of Europe, was unable to get into his office yesterday, and niether were his staff, because striking employees blocked access to the ministry building in downtown Athens. We are all aware of the miserable image we project as a country as seen through the eyes of the foreign media, but also in the eyes of foreign officials, and this image could not really get any darker. We also know that there is a limit to the kind of behavior that any union or lobby group should be allowed to display or should choose to display by its own accord. Especially in these troubled times, that line needs to be firmly drawn because crossing it simply means pushing the entire country closer to the edge – be it of financial ruin or irreparable damage to its reputation and image. It is time that those union bosses who believe there is no limit when pushing for demands became aware of the harm they are doing to the country and, in the long term, to their own sectors.
