Should Strikes Be Viewed as a Constitutional Right

For almost a year now, the Greek public sector has been repeatedly striking and protesting, the most important strikes being those of the Means of Transportation all over Athens, causing often a chaos, especially in the center of the city. The reason of all the protests and strikes are the new law enforcements and the austerity measures taken under the International Monetary Fund in order for Greece to overcome the financial debt. Salaries of public sector employees will be decreased dramatically, forcing people to barely cover basic survival needs. It seems as striking has always been a Greek way of protesting against unfavorable conditions, like several months ago with the truck striking and blocking of national roads, for other reasons. Should we, as citizens, accept their way of protesting as their constitutional right, or criticize them for making the situation worse? Furthermore, what should the government do about it?

From the point of view of citizens, strikes are not convenient at all. Most people that work or study in the centre of Athens, use buses or the subway or some other mean of transportation. For the last months when strikes occur, chaos is constantly created, due to the increased traffic on the roads. In addition, many people cannot afford to take a cab or do not own a car, so it is really difficult to reach their workplace or school. They face the risk of getting fired. Furthermore, there are cases were people that have to catch a flight are forced to pay a 35 euro cab fee to get to the airport, because buses or the subway are striking. The ironic part of the whole situation is that citizens have been getting used to it, there are for example web-pages like www.apergies.gr which offer detailed information about daily strikes. They have become part of our daily routine.

It is important to note that strike situations occurred in other nations usually receive a different treatment and are not tolerated. One year ago 442 air-traffic controllers in Spain decided to strike, causing a 24-hour airspace chaos and affecting an estimated 250,000 people. Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba had specifically said: "The immediate effect is that the controllers are now under orders to go back to work and can be charged with a crime under the military penal code if they refuse. The state of alert will initially last for 15 days." (BBC, 2010) In addition, back in 1982, US President Ronald Regan fired and replaced 12.000 air traffic controllers for striking (softwatretimes, 2003). Some would say that the Greek government should take a cue from these examples.

However there are always two sides in every story. Nobody can doubt that Greek citizens and mostly citizens of Athens do face a lot of difficulties due to strikes, and the whole situation provides a not so flattering image to the nation as well, but no one can doubt as well that the public sector is facing a crisis. Wages are reduced significantly