Greek Seamen’s Ferry Strike will Not Escalate

Photo © Lefteris Papaulakis / Shutterstock

The Pan-Hellenic Seamen’s Federation (PNO) has announced that it will not continue their industrial action once its four-day strike ends at 24:00 on Friday, May 19. Ferries in Greece have been docked since Tuesday.

According to reports, the decision to not continue the strike followed a meeting between PNO representatives and Shipping Minister Panayiotis Kouroumblis and the Deputy Minister of Social Security Tasos Petropoulos on Thursday. The Greek ministers assured the seamen that they would meet their demands for pensions, labor and collective labor agreements.

The Greek seamen were demanding their labor and social security rights to be restored to pre-memorandum levels and for their collective labor agreements to be in effect for workers of all categories of ships for 2017. The ferry workers were also protesting against uninsured labor and increased unemployment in their sector.