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Article from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/12201/

Monday 5 March 2012

Ashley Frawley

The myth of theworkshyGreek

Ashley Frawley reports from Greece on the

reality of the economic crisis: millions of

people working hard for low pay or no pay.

Thestoryof a young geology graduate forced to stock shelves at discount store

Poundland in return for her jobseekers allowance sparked a formidable backlash whenit came to light late last year. Accusations of slave labour were tossed around, and

embarrassed retailers quickly withdrew their involvement with the government-run

work-experience scheme. At the same time, the world seems slow to react in favour of

the cause of Greek workers, even when, beneath the rhetoric of belt tightening and

payback time, a similar drama is being played out here, with little hope of a steady

pay cheque at the end of it.

This is the reality of life in Greece. Its not just the ridiculously low wages, whose

consistently low rates (even before the crisis) have repeatedly been slashed and which new

reforms seek to slash further. It is also the fact that even for those in work, what little pay that

is promised is slow to materialise, if it does at all. Yet these facts are hard to dig out from

underneath the all-out rhetorical offensive that has been launched against the Greek working

class.

After all, they had it coming, didnt they? A nation of tax dodgers and early retirees, it was

their lax work-ethic that caused the crisis, and their bad behaviour that is now threatening to

bring down the Eurozone. German chancellor Angela Merkel more than hinted that southern

Europeans were not pulling their weight, taking too many vacation days, and mainstream

media outlets have widely castigated corruption, not just on behalf of Greeces plotting elites,but as something almost intrinsic to the psyche of the average Greek. Its time they got a taste

of what its like to get up early and work all day, as a sensationalist open letter to Greece

in a German tabloid put it back in 2010. Greeks have been told again and again that they have

had their party and now its time to pay.

While the metaphor of the hangover after the party might be appealing for its simplicity, it

entirely contradicts reality. Moreover, the expectation that in good times one should receive

decent and regular remuneration for ones work hardly fits the definition of a party.

Working for little or, as we will see, no pay at all, seems a bizarre and bitter cure for a

hangover.

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And yet working for free is precisely the situation in which many Greeks have found

themselves. Given the nature of the phenomenon, precise figures on unpaid labour are

difficult to come by, but workers at numerous companies, factories and media outlets have

reached a breaking point for precisely this reason. Some have been striking; others have taken

matters into their own hands.

In January, steel workers at the Loukisa plant went on strike after not being paid, in spite of

their continued work, for over two months. Staff at the newspaperEleutherotypia worked

unpaid from August before calling a strike in December, announcing on their webpage thattheyd had enough and that, The workers are the soul ofEleutherotypia! In February, they

took control of the presses and began publishing a workers edition, funded by solidarity

movements and charging 30 eurocents less than the original.

Similarly, facing few job prospects elsewhere and with little hope of seeing another pay

cheque, the workers of the television station Alter continued to go to work, day in day out, for

over a year before becoming exasperated in November. The workers took control of the

station and began broadcasting messages of protest to the nation, airing politicaldocumentaries and accusing their employers of fraud. And far from the caricature of the

workshy Greek, living easily off the state and sipping ouzo by the sea, hospital workers in

Athens carry on tending to patients while signs adorn the walls notifying passers-by that the

staff have been working unpaid for months.

Here on the island of Lefkada, away from the epicentre of the crisis, far from the petrol

bombs and burning banks, one could be forgiven for thinking that things might be different.

Yet almost everyone I spoke to was in a similar situation. George, 32, a local house-painter

whos been out of work for the past three months, told me that at the time he lost his job he

was already owed over 2,000 in unpaid wages. He gets by with help from siblings and

searches for work daily, but tells me that theres no work, and no hope of seeing the money

hes owed.

Similarly, Lampros, a 25-year-old physiotherapist, says that getting paid is sometimes moredifficult than working: Sometimes, employers dont give the money, sometimes they take a

long time. Giorgos, 41, the owner of a small shop selling household items, confirms thetrend: This is the case for a lot of businesses. By not paying, they try to buy time before they

go under. People might work for two months and get paid for maybe 10-20 days. And the

people are working because they dont have anything else to do and everybody is waiting,

hoping they will get paid.

While they wait, the bills and the taxes pile up. Giorgos continues: A lot of good customers,

the government owes them money. The government owes billions of euros to people, and

these people owe to others, and these to others, and so on. The debts pile up. But in the end,

it seems the only debts getting written off in Greece are those owed to workers.

As for blaming the problems on lazy, tax-evading Greeks, Argiris, 27, asks: How would you

feel if you paid someone to build you a house, and you paid them for many years and when

you were finally able to move in, you realised it was all broken and nothing worked; but then,

instead of fixing it, they charged you rent to live there? This is the situation in Greece.

Giorgos, the shop owner, puts it well: They say its our fault, because things were starting tobecome good. For example, I have a store, I am an owner. I have my house and a small boat

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to rest on when Im free and I can go on holiday for 15 days in the winter. They say, Who

are you, you Greeks, who have these things? They dont want people to be owners, they just

want workers. You are just a waiter or a barman, or you collect empty bottles. Thats all you

should be.

Indeed, there is more than a whiff of know your place about the treatment of Greeksthroughout the crisis. A few weeks ago, I was told by a (still gainfully employed)

businessman in Athens that Greeks had brought this on themselves. Working-class men had

luxury cars, he told me with an air of disapproval. The implication of allegations such as

these is that it was wrong for people to have aspired to have a better life, better things, to

have seen something in return for working six days a week, as many Greeks continue to do.

This response is, in effect, an unabashed admission that capitalism cannot give people the

better life on which its cheerleaders have long based its claims to superiority. What is really

odd is to blame the people for sharing this belief.

Ashley Frawley is a PhD candidate and assistant lecturer at the University of Kent.