Resisting Austerity: The Case of Greece”s Powerworkers and Steelworkers

Abstract

This paper studies workers’ agency in the context of government austerity measures in contemporary, crisis-hit Greece. It focuses upon the spatial aspects of two cases of worker mobilisation. The first of these involves powerworkers who supported widespread popular protests against a new property tax designed to raise government revenues. Importantly, the government had sought to collect this tax by adding it to people's electricity bills, a novel method which generated massive opposition. The second concerns strike activity engaged in by steelworkers employed at the Greek Steelworks SA in Aspropyrgos, in the capital region of Attica. These workers were responding to the company's taking advantage of new laws designed to increase flexibility in labour markets by allowing employers to fire more people than they otherwise would have been allowed to do. The paper analyses the different tactics employed in both of these quite different efforts to challenge Greek austerity measures. In analysing these different tactics we explore the role of in-place and trans-local networks of solidarity in response to government policy. A deeper understanding of such factors, we would suggest, may contribute to strengthening the prospects of workers’ struggle in places and spaces where painful capital devaluation diminishes workers’ rights and dismantles social and employment protections.