14:45

Not everyone in Greece backs today’s general strike, reports Helena Smith.



Those in the private sector, now generating most of the country’s wealth, are furious at what they regard as the indulged antics of pampered public sector workers widely seen as the root cause of Greece’s economic woes.

Shopkeepers in central Athens this morning were irate that they should be made to bear the brunt of yet more protests – and appalled that the GSEE, the union representing private sector workers was actually backing it.

“All I want to do is get on with the business of selling [eye] glasses,” said Spyros Gerakidis, an optician whose family-run business is within walking distance of Syntagma square.

“Every time there are strikes and rallies it messes up the market.”

I have been getting an extraordinary rap for my piece earlier today citing trade unionists and far left activists who organized the strike. Greece, say critics, is moving ever closer to becoming a failed state precisely because of its failure to modernize and deal with its cumbersome state apparatus.

“It is no secret that the Greek public sector not only represents a terrible burden on taxpayers (various tax and social security withholdings represent approximately 50% of payroll cost), but in addition is profoundly corrupt,” wrote one prominent Athenian business lawyer, in an email today.

He claims that, by not reforming, the Greek public sector is causing “economic regression and social decay”.

“The Greek public sector serves not the interests of our society but the interests of public sector employees, both by the extraction of favourable employment terms and the absolute lack of effective management (including any form of evaluation.”

As a result, Greece’ mammoth fiscal adjustment had moved predominantly to the private sector which had also borne the brunt of record unemployment.