Irrational action goes too far
The strike by customs officers has already begun to have an impact on the Greek market and the most ludicrous things about all this is that the reasons cited for the strike are bureaucratic. The work stoppage is not about real worker demands, such as, say, wage increases. What the unionists running the show are demanding is that the government allow them to determine the terms of their pay. The irrationality of certain unionists has reached ridiculous proportions. Amid widespread calls for the abolition of all «special accounts» so that some order can finally be put to public finances, customs officers are asking that their own «special fund» be maintained and are even willing to put the Greek economy in a stranglehold in order to achieve it. Workers’ demands must be respected but not when they go too far. A strike would make sense if customs officers saw huge cutbacks in their wages, but the process by which they are paid is the sole responsibility of the government, which has a duty to abolish the numerous special accounts (some of which are not as transparent as they ought to be) that it has to manage.
