Greece Outside In: European strikes: who is protesting and why?

People in Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Greece have joined strikes and demonstrations against austerity measures

Italy

The Italian union CGIL led a four-hour general strike in Italy to protest against labour reforms instituted by Mario Monti's government easing hiring and firing rules, as well as rising unemployment and austerity-driven spending cuts and tax hikes which are hitting families hard, just as the recession sends thousands of businesses under. But students were also well represented on the streets, protesting against education cuts and what they see as a jobless future. One banner singled out the labour minister, Elsa Fornero, who recently warned graduates not to be "choosy" about jobs when they enter the job market. "Stay Choosy? Choose to fight," read the banner.

Spain

Spanish unions have launched their second general strike this year to protest at budget cuts they say are strangling the economy, killing jobs and hurting all but the well-off. They accuse the conservative People's party government of breaking promises made in their election campaign a year ago and of using the crisis as a smokescreen for dismantling public services, creeping privatisation and undermining working rights. Ignacio Fernández Toxo, leader of the Comisiones Obreras union group, accused the government of implementing "impositions from Brussels, or more exactly, the road map imposed by Berlin and Chancellor Merkel". "I'm striking today because this last labour reform is a fast track to unemployment," said Fatima Frutos, a local government equality officer in the northern town of Pamplona. "Spain's welfare state is being sold off at bargain basement prices."

Germany

In Germany, people were not particularly complaining about their own problems but rather seeking greater social equality in the whole crisis. Germany's federation of trade unions (DGB) galvanised several thousand protesters across the country to demonstrate their solidarity towards strikers in southern Europe. Under the banner "against the social division of Europe", it said workers in Greece, Spain and Portugal in particular were paying for a crisis for which they were not responsible. Doro Zinke, the boss of DGB Berlin who gathered protesters at the Brandenburg Gate, said that anger among German workers was growing over politicians' lack of joined-up thinking. "The EU is concentrating solely on the economy but the EU also needs a social face and with that, job creation schemes for young people as well as an intensive effort across the continent to tackle wage dumping."

France

The five main French unions organised around 100 protests across the country on Wednesday to protest at the "shock treatments" being meted out to workers, especially those in Greece, Spain and Portugal. Austerity, they warned, was plunging Europe into "economic stagnation, if not recession" and was unfair, adding that unemployment in France had not stopped rising for 17 months. "Precariousness is growing, millions of employees are getting work only with fixed contracts for shorter and shorter periods; 11 million people are affected by exclusion or poverty, many of them pensioners. Private and public salaries are stagnant." Opposed to economic "libéralisme" (broadly, the free market), they called for the setting up of a European "social contract" giving European workers equal rights, ending competition between countries and creating "solidarity".

Greece

Greeks, who on average have seen their purchasing power decrease by 35%, want pay and pension cuts to be revoked and collective work agreements, a hard-earned right going back decades, to be reinstated. The prospect of up to 150,000 civil servants being fired by 2015, with the first wave being laid off by December – a central tenet of the €13.5bn austerity package passed by the Greek parliament last week – is another grievance. "People haven't been fired from the public sector in this country for over a hundred years," said Nikos Alexopoulos, head of the union of interior ministry employees as he marched through Athens with black flag in hand on Wednesday. "At a time when almost no one can survive, they now want to get rid of 150 of the 600 people who work in our ministry." Greeks are also demanding that unpaid pensions and wages – often going back months – be paid and that mass privatisations and the merging of loss-making, state-run organisations be dropped.