\n<\/p>\n
Athens, Greece \u2013<\/strong> When the conservative New Democracy party came to power in Greece in 2019, it promised a work-driven economy that would grow by 4 percent a year and elevate living standards after a decade of austerity.<\/p>\n In an appeal to the productive, non-state economy, Kyriakos Mitsotakis became prime minister, asking Greeks to \u201cwork together to build a new compact of trust based on meritocracy, industriousness, security, justice, opportunities for everyone\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Five years later, Greeks had the second-lowest annual salaries in the European Union after Bulgaria, according to Eurostat, the EU statistical agency.<\/p>\n Every other Eastern European country that had become a free-market democracy in 1991 and an EU member in 2004, almost a quarter-century after Greece, has leapfrogged ahead of it.<\/p>\n From 2019 to 2024, \u201cBulgaria rose 11 points whereas we rose 3 points,\u201d said Yiorgos Christopoulos, spokesman for the General Confederation of Workers in Greece (GSEE), the country\u2019s private sector umbrella union. \u201cIf this goes on, Bulgaria, too, will overtake us in the next two to three years,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n GSEE\u2019s latest report found that during these five years, Greek living standards rose from 65.5 percent of the EU average to just 68.5 percent, despite the fact that the economy has grown at almost twice the EU rate since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.<\/p>\n When New Democracy was re-elected in 2023, it promised to restore living standards and made good on those promises.<\/p>\n Minimum wage was recently restored to 920 euros ($1,080) a month, from the 580 euros ($680) to which it had been slashed amid the post-2009 global financial crisis. By next year, it is to rise to 950 euros ($1,114).<\/p>\n Average monthly wages, too, have risen to 1,516 euros ($1,777), fulfilling New Democracy\u2019s promise a year early.<\/p>\n New Democracy also came through on promises of tax cuts. This year, all income tax brackets were slashed by two points, and by a further two points for each dependent child.<\/p>\n Workers under 25 pay no tax until they earn more than 20,000 euros ($23,450).<\/p>\n Mitsotakis took a moment to congratulate his government on its performance since 2019 at last September\u2019s Thessaloniki International Fair, where he announced these measures.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not coincidence that the country of austerity now has one of the highest growth rates in Europe, with unemployment at 8 percent, down from 18 percent, 500,000 new jobs, public debt 30 points lower, while salaries increase and taxes fall.\u201d<\/p>\n But in real terms, Greek incomes have fallen by a third in the past 15 years, EU statistics show.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a greater increase in inflation than in salaries, so we have a fall in purchasing power,\u201d explained Efi Achtsioglou, who was labour minister under the left-wing Syriza government in 2016-19. \u201cIn our country, inflation is much higher than the EU average, and our salaries are lower than the EU average in real terms,\u201d she told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Normally, labour unions and employers\u2019 unions would sit with the government every year to agree on sectoral wage rises roughly in line with inflation. This has not happened since New Democracy came to power.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what has led to this situation is that you have very few workers now covered by collective wage bargaining agreements \u2013 below 20 percent, when EU directives say it has to be above 80 percent,\u201d said Achtsioglou.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had more collective wage agreements in 2018, so after the crisis, instead of getting better, things got worse,\u201d she said, referring to the post-2009 global financial crisis, which saw Greece slash its minimum wage in February 2012.<\/p>\n Since Greece is still a small-enterprise economy \u2013 roughly 90 percent of employment comes from companies with 10 or fewer employees \u2013 it is especially important to have collective agreements, Achtsioglou pointed out.<\/p>\n Greece also has a much worse track record on worker safety than the government lets on, says GSEE.<\/p>\n According to official statistics submitted by the labour ministry, Greece had 51 work-related deaths in 2023. The Federation of Workers\u2019 Unions in Technical Enterprises (OSETEE), a GSEE offshoot, tallied the number at 179.<\/p>\n Last year set a record at 201, and OSETEE has recorded 47 in the first four months of this year.<\/p>\n \u201cLarge categories of workers aren\u2019t included [in government figures], such as maritime professions, security bodies, quarries, the armed forces \u2026 freelance workers, who are 20 percent of the workforce, and anyone uninsured by social security,\u201d said Andreas Stoimenidis, head of OSETEE.<\/p>\n Government statistics also do not count hospital or traffic deaths as being related to work, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cLast summer, a worker was killed after setting up a concert and was driving to set up another. He had a car crash because he was working unbelievable hours,\u201d said Achtsioglou. \u201cThe ministry did not record that as a work accident but as a simple traffic accident.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, New Democracy passed legislation allowing an employee to work up to 13 hours a day for a single employer as part of its steady deregulation of labour. That, said Achtsioglou, was a recipe for more deaths.<\/p>\n \u201cStatistics show that accidents happen towards the end of work shifts,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The International Labour Organization agreed that Greece was under-reporting deaths in its 2025 tally.<\/p>\n There may also be an unconsciously racist element to some of these deaths, say migration experts.<\/p>\n A quarter of last year\u2019s tally took place in construction, another quarter in agriculture, and another 15 in tourism \u2013 making them the first, second and fourth most lethal professions.<\/p>\n All three industries employ a high proportion of migrant labour, and Greece has said it is actively seeking to recruit another 200,000 foreign workers in them.<\/p>\n \u201cOne could reasonably wonder whether safety rules are being followed, and whether there is an unconscious bias towards immigrant workers when it comes to safety,\u201d said Lefteris Papagiannakis, head of the Greek Council for Refugees, a legal aid group. \u201cThere is now a body of statistics at our disposal so it\u2019s not something we can\u2019t properly investigate,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Athens, Greece \u2013 When the conservative New Democracy party came to power in Greece in 2019, it promised a work-driven economy that would grow by 4 percent a year and elevate living standards after a decade of austerity. In an appeal to the productive, non-state economy, Kyriakos Mitsotakis became prime minister, asking Greeks to \u201cwork […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
What went wrong?<\/h2>\n
\u2018Few workers covered by collective bargaining\u2019<\/h2>\n
Work deaths soar<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"