GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

working tirelessly with volunteers to provide those in need, be it Greek or

Syrian, with at least one meal a day, but also clothes, education, somewhere to

wash, rest and simply communicate with others on a level playing field as

suicide rates, as well as unemployment, had shot up. On the Saturday the far

right group Golden Dawn marched through Athens and whilst we were out of

the way and safe, the tales of solidarity we heard the next day from the people

trying to help the refugees was inspirational. We met Zoe Konstantopoulou

who is the former Speaker of Hellenic Parliament, a human rights lawyer and

an MP for Syriza. She met us on the Saturday evening and we literally spoke

for hours. It was refreshing, because how many MPs, even in the Labour

Party, would have met a group of young people from a different country on a

Saturday afternoon (we could not shut her up!) to talk to us about what had

happened in Greece, her experiences of being seen as a powerful woman, of

seeing corruption first hand and of literally being locked out of Parliament and

when she explained going on this particular morning to get in and the keys not

working we thought she was joking and she was being deadly serious, they

had literally been locked out.

Our last visit of the trip was with Dr. Christina Theochary who told us that 50%

of young people are unemployed and that this was rising, which was worrying

for the future of the trade union movement in Greece. That being said, there

was some growth in precarious and part time workers which had not occurred

in the past which were likened to our own movement in the UK. The structure

of the movement in Greece is different to ours. Public and private sector

unions work parallel to each other, each with their own separate structures and

movements, and they only meet when academics meet rather than together

like we do here with the GFTU and the TUC, so they kind of work in two

separate movements whereas we work as one and we found that quite

strange. We also found that they are not political over there, the trade unions,

at least from Dr. Christina’s point of view they were not, which again we found

odd, especially with what was going on over in Greece. They had got positions

on what was happening, but they had got absolutely no influence with politics

at all.

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