Greece – Fuel Shortages and Panic Buying of Petrol 2011.10.11

As I wrote in yesterday’s article the Papandreou regime seems to get a buzz from causing chaos in Greece.

I detailed how the PASOK government made last minutes changes to the wage structure of government employees to also include state-run companies.

These companies included the public power utility DEI and the state-run refinery company. As stated by the union workers in the state refineries they have gone on strike today and according to latest reports the majority of petrol stations in Greece now appear to have no petrol and those that do have large ques for the remaining fuel.

The aspect of this strike which is most worrying is the statement that this strike will run indefinitely until refinery workers are excluded for the new uniform wage structure.

There are so many questions raised by the governments actions it is hard to know where to start.

Greece has experienced numerous fuel disruptions in 2011 none of which help the economy in any way (to state the obvious).

Throughout the last 2 years the price of petrol in Greece has doubled going from the cheapest in Europe along with Portugal to the second most expensive in the world lagging only behind Norway.

Despite the oil industry in Greece massively increasing tax revenues for the government over the past 2 years the PASOK regime stills sees it as a good move to provoke the refineries into an indefinite strike which affects the daily lives and businesses of all Greeks.

Of all the problems Greece has at the moment why would the PASOK regime want to interfere with a company that contributes massively to its budget?

A move like this, at this time is a suicidal move if the PASOK government is serious about growing the Greek economy and/or stabilising the Greek economy.

Ill thought out moves like this do far more harm than good yet the PASOK government shows no sign of changing its strategy.

In a way it reminds me of the miners strike in Britain. The issue of the miners was more than about the miners getting paid too much or having benefits which the government thought too large.

The miners strike boiled down to the fact that the government loathed a single union having so much power over the British economy. The NUM had the power to seriously disrupt electricity supplies throughout the UK and this is something the Thatcher government was not prepared to tolerate.

Papandreou may argue that the refinery unions have too much power over Greece and maybe they do, but in the thick of a worsening depression is not the time to be trying to sort out issues like this especially when your government is over spending by 2 billion Euros a month.

The priorities of the PASOK regime are completely mixed up.

Let us look at how pay cap for the public sector is a complete fallacy.

By PASOK’s own admission this new pay structure will only save Greece a billion Euros a year. And this is when the government spends around 30 billion Euros a year that it does not have.

Okay a billion Euro saving is not to be sniffed at but the savings will take at least a year to be realised because Papandreou wants to put the effected workers on gardening leave for a year first.

Papandreou and Venizelos act like they have all the time in the world to sort out the government and this is when they themselves admit that they will run out of money in November.

On one hand the are playing with the edges of the problem, like their finances are not really that big an issue and yet on the other hand they are saying that the government will run out of money in November and army might have to be called in.

By all means lie to the people but at least have the respect to be consistent about the lie.

It could be that Papandreou and Venizelos are simply procrastinators or they are simply living in complete denial of what running out of money means.

So far Papandreou and PASOK have simply used the bailout as a political tool for remaining in power for the longest possible time. No progress has been made with addressing the government deficit, it has actually got worse, yet for some reason the EU and Troika are still considering giving Greece more bail out money when they have shown they have no interest in doing the right thing.

A lot has been said about Margaret Thatcher smashing the unions in the UK and how it was such a good thing. That may or may not be true but in Greece at the moment, when you have a completely out of control government trashing the rights of its population seemingly on a whim unions are more important than ever.

In a socialist state like Greece, when so much power is concentrated in so few hands it is essential that there are unions to at least balance out the monopolistic power of the state.

So to summarize the last few paragraphs, the uniform pay structure really is a drop in the ocean of Greece’s problems, for the PASOK government to go ahead and disrupt fuel supplies and possibly electricity supplies for something that will make little difference to the big picture shows a complete lack of competence or alternatively the PASOK regime is working to a different agenda that what it claims.

The union leader for the refineries said something which I think will strike a chord with most Greeks

Speaking on Skai Television’s “New Files” program, Nikos Orfanos said that a government draft bill to reduce spending in the sector represents a threat to workers’ terms of employment, adding that the new measures are aimed at transforming Greece into a “colony” under the control of foreigners.

Papandreou claims his priority is the cut the government deficit but his actions run completely counter to that statement. By disrupting fuel supplies he is reducing tax revenue, reducing the GDP of Greece but yet Papandreou claims he wants to increase tax revenues and increase the GDP.

Surely there has to come a point when there is a vote of no confidence in his leadership in the Greek parliament or are all Greek politicians equally clueless or in his back pocket?

For a country that said “Oxi” to the might of the Benito Mussolini regime, the Greeks seem to have lost all their fight – who knows why.