Greek workers hold general strike over high cost of living and call for collective wage agreements

Greek public and private sector workers walked off the job Wednesday in a 24-hour general strike that is disrupting services across the country, with public transport in the capital suspended for several hours and ferries that connect the islands to the mainland tied up in port.

Medical staff at state-run hospitals and teachers are also participating in the strike, called by labor unions to protest the high cost of living and demand collective wage agreements that were scaled back during Greece’s nearly decade-long financial crisis that began in 2010.

Journalists at Greek media outlets held their own 24-hour strike in support on Tuesday, pulling all news broadcasts off the air for the day, so they could cover Wednesday’s general strike.

Protest marches were planned for central Athens later Wednesday.

Unions have criticized the center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for failing to tackle inflation and housing policies, which have eroded workers’ living standards.

Greece’s financial crisis saw a quarter of the country’s economy wiped out after decades of profligate spending left it locked out of international bond markets. Successive international bailouts came on condition the country implement deeply unpopular reforms that included pension and wage cuts and saw poverty and unemployment rates spiral.

Greece has since returned to healthy growth and recently achieved investment-grade status again, but it still retains the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the European Union.

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