|
 Pensioner Fotini Papadaki held her nose as she added her own small
bag to the mounds. "It's deplorable, I understand job worries but
taking it out on society ... is going too far," she said.
Around her, early morning commuters dodged past the reeking sacks as
trash collectors and other municipal workers entered the second week
of their walkout.
The strikers fear job losses as Greece wrestles with its seventh
year of austerity demanded by international creditors. More
specifically, the workers want better terms for short-term staff
threatened, they say, by a court order banning extensions to their
contracts.
Many residents, battered by the same spending cuts, were sympathetic
at the start. But that support has come under strain as the rubbish
bags pile up in the baking summer sun.
Across the capital and other cities, residents have reported growing
numbers of insects, rats, stray cats and dogs, all of them carriers
of infection.
Authorities have asked people to keep their trash at home, though
for flat-dwellers like Fotini Papadaki, there is only so much room
on their balconies.
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Some municipalities, including Thessaloniki in the north, have
turned to the private sector to alleviate the situation, outsourcing
rubbish removal.
It remains to be seen how long their strained budgets can take the
extra cost. And the strikers are showing no signs of backing down.
"We will step up labor action unless the government accepts our
demands," said Nikos Trakas, head of municipal workers labor union
POE-OTA.
(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos and Lefteris Papadimas; Editing
by Andrew Heavens)
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