"We are 595 cleaning women and for years we have been working for the Greek Ministry of Finance. Since 18th September 2013 we have been in a state of suspension and in May 2014 we are to lose our jobs, to be FIRED.
We are all women – the gender discrimination is obvious – and most of us are over 50; very close to retirement and pension, which we will never get. Many of us have a one-parent family who live on our salary.
These austerity policies deprive us of our right to work and to life. Right now, unemployment in Greece is at 27% and for women it is at 62.8%.
We have no hope of finding a job, we are fired without severance pay without the right to get unemployment benefit, without the right to healthcare.
Until 2005, we had been working on works contracts. Then, after an EU Directive and Greece being fined, our employment contracts were changed to “open-ended”.
The Government claims that we are being dismissed to reduce the deficits. Yet the truth is that we only cost the Greek State € 2,500,000 a year. Even so, it is obvious that to the Greek Government and the Troika we are just numbers, not human lives.
For four months, since 18th September, we have been protesting daily outside the Ministry of Finance. We have been fighting a titanic fight that has been answered by the Greek Government with violence and repression.
As we belong to the lower strata of the working class and we are women, they thought we would be an easy target and the weakest link. But together with thousands of other redundant workers we fight against the Greek Government and Troika’s measures that crush our lives and lead us to utter poverty.
We continue our fight and shall not give up until we are vindicated with all the peoples in Europe, we struggle to defeat the policies that impoverish us, together we can!
We claim the right to work, to social security, to pension. We ask for what is self-evident: dignity in life, through our humble job.
We ask ALTER SUMMIT to support our struggle, to stand by us at these difficult moments we are going through as working women."
Contact info@altersummit.eu for more information and support
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