Power cuts throughout the Greece continued on Friday as Greek Public Power Corporation (PPC) employees refused to call off strike action which was launched against the government pension reform plan.
Their national union GENOP-DEH called off the six rolling strikes that were due to begin on Friday so that there would be no court hearing. In the meantime, however, the local employee associations that made up GENOP-DEH around the country voted to stay on strike.
The PPC management has issued an announcement expressing hope that the unions will at least provide the skeleton staff needed to keep the power plants running if the strike continued in the following week.
Government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said on Friday there were no plans to force striking PPC employees to return to work through a "civil mobilization," such as that used to end a strike by dock workers that had cut off communication with the Greek islands in previous years.
He also rejected a claim by the PPC staff union GENOP-DEH that there was sufficient power to cover the country's requirements, saying that there would be no need for power cuts if that were true.
The spokesman pointed out that 16 power station were currently off-line because of the strike action, even though the union had an obligation to provide skeleton staff.
Source: Xinhua
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