Lambidona: How austerity interferes with identity and… trade unions
Chapter 2 of “The Million-Dollar Question” series.
Photos: A. Christofilopoulos / FOS PHOTOS
How can a word from the outer world, like economic crisis, become a master of the inner? As the dust settles, as money has dried up in pockets, as oil in the kitchen has dried up, money becomes a shaper of the inner, families, and the trade unions.
In an industrial kitchen, with blank metallic tables, big pots and pans, Tassia is getting ready to work. She is the chef; twice a week she puts together the menu for the people in the neighborhood. She is cutting carrots, wearing an apron and a white cap with the logo of Lambidona, a community house in the neighborhood of Vyronas, in Athens.
As the clock turns ten in the morning, most of the kitchen team has appeared. Vuela’s task is to do the dishes, Maria is washing and cutting dill and parsley, Fondas is replacing the gas bottle, Anestis is picking up food at the market, Janis is helping out where he can, and Tassia is now safely at the stove, stirring big pots — one with tomato sauce and one with white beans.
Everybody knows the routine; most of them have been a part of the soup kitchen for years. The atmosphere is joyful, the radio is playing popular Greek music, and Fondas is gossiping about a priest who is in a sexual relationship with a young woman.
They work at a steady tempo, and at half past one the kitchen team is taking a small break. It is the quiet before the storm. The tables are set; cleaned and arranged in a big square with a hole in the middle, to fit 24 people. As it gets closer to two, the team gets on their feet, bringing plates and cutlery out to the serving bar, along with pots, bowls of salad, and breadbaskets.
A couple of people are sitting at the tables, and at the left side of the bar a silent queue is forming. They are waiting patiently, but hungry. As the first plates with hot soup and salad are handed over the bar, more people head for the queue.
“Everybody who has been reading about Greece and the economic crisis over the last six years has come across the word ‘austerity’.”
At two twenty the tables are full; the ones on the terrace outside the building, ditto. It is a silent lunch. People are here to eat. Few words are shared with neighbors.
Augustus, one of the regulars, is sitting at the corner of the table eating his bowl of fasolada, a traditional Greek soup with white beans, carrots, celery, and tomato paste. On the side he is having a salad with white cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, and one black olive. Sweeping the floor and eating lunch at Lambidona is his Saturday routine.
I ask him why his wife isn’t joining him. He tells me she doesn’t like the place, the people that come here; too poor.
Janis, 47, is the only one in the kitchen team of Lambidona, who has a regular job. He just got it, and for the next eight months he will be working at a swimming pool, doing all kinds of work there.
He has been part of Lambidona for three years. “This place is like my home, when I get to the park I feel like home,” he tells me.
“When I see people throwing things in the park, it feels like they are messing up my home. This place belongs to all of us, that is why I feel like this,” he explains.
He has two boys, five and seven years old, and a wife, who I have been having Greek classes with, Elena. They are from Albania but came to Athens in 1996. She speaks Greek perfectly, but it’s the grammar that is troubling her.
I’m interested in how his life has changed during the crisis. So I ask him.
“Well, I got much worse during the crisis,” he says.
Can you be more concrete? I ask.
“Well, there is a psychological factor. I’m the man in my family, but I don’t feel self-confident anymore because of the crisis. I used to be self-confident about finding a job and stuff like that. But all that has changed,” he explains.
His kids are interrupting; something happened on the playground near to Lambidona, and they are complaining to him.
As they leave, I ask how he looks at the future of his kids?
“If I could go to another country, I would go.”
But you have a job? I try.
“Yes, but the contract is only for eight months, and it’s bad. I would still prefer to go to another country,” he tells me.
“After these eight months I will be unemployed again, and I just started. I feel insecure even when I have a job, because it is for such a small period.”
Everybody who has been reading about Greece and the economic crisis over the last six years has come across the word ‘austerity’.
I have grown to dislike the word itself. But who doesn’t? It is a fitting word though, just read the Cambridge Dictionary definitions of austerity:
1. the condition of living without unnecessary things and without comfort, with limited money or goods (…).
2. a difficult economic situation caused by a government reducing the amount of money it spends.
3. the quality of being austere in appearance or manner.
“As the labour market was increasingly deregulated, the community of Lambidona came to be more and more organised.”
As the austerity measures have kicked in over the last six years, the field of labour has seen changes. Trade unions; collective bargaining; the negotiating between employer and employee, are all in a very different place today.
Under the conservative-led government in 2012, the mechanism of collective bargaining was frozen, the minimum wage was cut, and rules covering mass layoffs were liberalized.
A study by Zoe Lanara with the title “The Impact of Anti-Crisis Measures and the Social and Employment Situation — Greece” (2013), deals with the changes within the labour market.
Her study looks back at austerity measures in 2010, the so-called “MTFS 2011–2014”.
In Zoe Lanara’s own words the austerity strategy was to “substantially reduce wages, squeeze labour costs in the private sector, and reinforce wage flexibility at the firm-level unilaterally by legislation” all in the name of competitiveness, but it was also to:
“significantly diminish the role of trade unions.”
Concludingly, dismissals, or in plain English: sacking people, was made easier and cheaper for employers. The National General Collective Labour Agreement along with the minimum wage were under persistent attack by the Troika, and still are, Zoe Lanara’s report says.
In another report by Zoe Lanara, she calls the case of Greece an experiment:
“The on-going deterioration of labour’s position, it seems that Greece is being used as a laboratory in an experiment on the consequences of uprooting labour institutions. Greek workers are increasingly being penalised to set an example to workers in other EU countries, thereby setting in motion a downward spiral across Europe with a view to reversing the European social model and its sustaining institutions.” (Trade Unions in Greece and the Crisis — A Key Actor under Pressure, 2012)
Janis’ new job situation is, in all its simplicity, caught up in this, caught up in the labour market, where workers and trade unions have less and less of a say.
Last summer, 2015, the working conditions caught up with the European Commission, and along with the Greek Parliament, they agreed to set experts to do a review on the Greek labour market.
The experts were to look at the frameworks, including collective dismissal, industrial action and collective bargaining, taking into account best practices internationally and in Europe.
An important outcome of the review is that the experts support the Greek position for restoring collective bargaining.
Which is one of the reasons why Effie Achtsioglou, director of the Labour Minister’s Cabinet and head of the Greek negotiation team, calls the review “positive” and says that it “reflects the positions of the Greek government on key points of the negotiation.” So she tells the newspaper Avgi.
She sees the review as a powerful tool in the forthcoming negotiation and a solid basis for the discussion which will be taking place with the lenders, and where especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be a hard nut to crack.
In Effie Achtsioglou’s opinion, the report is a victory insofar as it recognises that a deconstruction of the labour market did take place, since 2010.
Here we are. 2016. The unemployment rate was 23,2 percent this July, more or less the same rate as back in 2012, with the years in between drawing a curve like a mountain top.
As the labour market was increasingly deregulated, the community of Lambidona came to be more and more organised.
Today, the discussion on labour relations is back on the agenda — but I still think Lambidona will be there tomorrow.
The next chapter: While Janis is one of the lucky ones, Anestis is not. He is one of the 18 percent in long-term unemployment. Read about Anestis, his wife and kids; the neo-poor.
This post is part of AthensLive’s The Million-Dollar Question series, looking at how people get by with nothing. If you liked this story, please click on the ♥ below to recommend it to your friends, and follow us to catch the next one. Thanks!
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