Greek tube 
strikers 
threatened
with jail

The stand-off is the latest stage of a bitter eight-day dispute over austerity measures.

After unions protesting at pay cuts had refused to return to work despite a court order last night, Transport Minister Kostis Hadzidakis announced the government was imposing the civil mobilisation measure, under which workers who continue to strike risk a jail term of up to five years.

The metro strike and other public transport stoppages this week have caused rush-hour chaos across Athens.

“The unionists have decided to follow a course of blind confrontation as well as adopting unreasonable strike methods,” Mr Hatzidakis said after a meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

“As a result of their actions, they are causing difficulties for Athens and Athens’ society and they are creating a serious financial problem for the city. ... We can take no other action than to proceed with the measure of (civil) mobilisation.”

Under a 2007 law to deal with “peacetime emergencies,” defying a civil mobilisation order carries a minimum sentence of three months in prison and a maximum of five years.

The continuing strike is seen as direct challenge to the latest austerity measures. The strikers had got around the court order banning their action by changing the union demands to avoid potential prosecution.

Metro workers have rejected plans to scrap their existing contracts as part of a broader reform to public sector pay, with their union saying the measure would subject them to an average 25 per cent loss of their salaries.

The spending cuts have been imposed to meet fiscal requirements by international creditors in return for much-needed bailout loans. The loan conditions have deepened economic hardship – Greece is in a sixth year of recession, with unemployment spiralling above 26 per cent.

Public transport unions have threatened to escalate their protests if a civil mobilisation order was issued.

Yannis Panagopoulos, head of one of Greece’s two largest umbrella unions, the GSEE, called on the government to “immediately repeal” the civil mobilisation order, and accused it of violating workers’ constitutional rights.

“The problems that public transport workers face, and for which they are in no way responsible, cannot be solved with civil mobilisations and the criminalisation of labour action,” he said in a statement.

Separately, a seamen’s union announced a 48-hour ferry strike starting next Thursday to protest at changes in labour laws that will allow more employees to be hired on short-term contracts.

AP

blob please Spain’s unemployment rate has shot up to 26.02% with nearly six million people now out of work.

The country’s National Statistics Institute said today that the rate rose by one per cent between the third and fourth quarters of last year.

It said 691,700 more people lost their jobs last year.

Spain is in the throes of its second recession in just over three years following the collapse of its once-booming property sector in 2008.

The year-old conservative government, battling to reduce a swollen deficit and avoid a bailout, has brought in major financial and labour reforms and applied severe cutbacks in wages and spending but so far the economy has shown few signs of recovery.

AP