Surprise work stoppage at Athens metro causes citizens' and PM's anger
- Written by E.Tsiliopoulos
The sudden decision to halt Metro operations once again caused discomfort to passengers who couldn't get to work and created traffic chaos on the streets, with carsforming long queues in traffic jams on Athens' central streets.
Indeed, as soon as it became known that the work stoppage was decided because the company was moving 21 employees from offices to ticket booths in stations, anger was overtook citizens, passengers and drivers stuck on the streets. Citizens' anger was prevalent on social media.
The Metro employees' work stoppage was carried out by a single union, SELMA, with the aim of maintaining 21 employees in office posts twho have been designated to move to ticket booths. Indeed, some of them had previously been employed as ticket issuers, while four had previously worked at fee control and were deemed inadequate.
It is recalled that in recent years, with the decisions of boards of directors, hundreds of field staff have been relocated to office positions, resulting in, because of insufficient automatic machinery at stations. serious shortcomings in ticket sales and the company's physical presence at the stations.
Mitsotakis' anger: Sorry for the inconvenience - Setting up for security personnel
Posting on Twitter, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized to the public for the inconvenience and made it clear that the government was not going to be blackmailed because 21 people were asked to do their job. He even revealed that there would be legislation for security personnel.
