Civil servants shown the door

"Three-stage redundancy programme" headlinesTa Nea, which reports on the most recent austerity measures presented by the Greek government on 2 October. A total of 30,000 civil service jobs are to be cut between now and the end of the year. “The procedure will be divided into three phases,” explains the newspaper. In the first phase, 10,000 civil servants aged over 60 will instructed to take early retirement, and 20,000 will be informed that they no longer have work because the organisations that employ them are to be terminated. Initially, members of this group will placed in “labour reserve” and have their pay docked by 40%. At the third stage of the plan they may be made redundant.”

Rival daily, To Ethnosremarks that George Papandreou’s government “is playing with fire,” but that it has no other alternative. The administration “has no room for manoeuvre, now that other choices have been ruled out Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. At the same time, the Greek problem is far from being resolved. It will once again be high on the agenda for the 18 October EU summit and November’s G20 meeting.”