24 September 2008

Pantheon - A Panoply of Protests

The Greek government's plan to privatize Olympic is running into a little opposition and protest. Indeed almost all the unions are not happy that the airline will downsize by about 40% in terms of head count.

Despite "an only in Greece solution" that takes the best of Varig's bad bankruptcy solution and a smattering of the Alitalia bail out (now almost dead) which offered state jobs to half the cut workers and very nice redundancy payments to others, the staff are not happy.

"Olympic Airlines is a national matter, it is the flag of the Greeks in the skies, and we will never, as simple workers and citizens, accept that this company stops flying," said Manolis Patetsos, head of the Civil Aviation Trade Union Federation, who was part of the protest.

I think that states exactly the problem.

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