Garbage piles up as deadlock with municipal workers continues

Garbage has started mounting up on the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki as a deadlock between municipal workers and the government continues over the latter’s plans to place hundreds of state workers in a redundancy scheme and to introduce a new payroll structure that will see civil service salaries reduced.

The situation is expected to worsen as the union representing municipal workers, POE-OTA, said on Tuesday that it will participate in a nationwide public sector strike on Wednesday and is mulling further action.

In a related development, courts in Patra, western Greece, and Kozani in the north ruled in favor of seperate groups of municipal workers challenging their placement in the labor reserve scheme. Another group of 18 civil servants from the municipality of Nea Ionia, north of Athens, have also appealed their redundancies in court.