Workers are protesting the austerity measures that are part of the country’s third bailout.
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Around 24,000 people marched in three separate demonstrations in Athens.
Strikers will rally in central Athens and march by parliament, close to a hotel where talks with European Union and International Monetary Fund inspectors resumed on Wednesday as part of Greece’s first bailout review.
A previous strike from November 2-5 by the island ferry seafarer’s union PNO halted the transportation of refugees from Syria and other countries, thousands of whom have arrived in the Greek islands this year.
With a quarter of the work force chronically unemployed and poverty rates at unprecedented record highs in decades, protesters on Thursday said that society can not withstand more strain and alternative solutions need to be found.
The strike closed museums and archaeological sites, including the Acropolis, as well as state schools and pharmacies.
One protester said that the protest was a message to the Greek government that the people are on alert and aware of what is going on, and that the government needs to find other means and actions to keep from cutting pension and wages, and to give the people better health care and social security benefits.
Tensions briefly boiled over in the city’s main Syntagma Square, where riot police fired tear gas at dozens of black-clad youths who broke off from the march to hurl petrol bombs and stones and smash shop windows near parliament.
“We’re implementing an arrangement which contains (bailout) measures which are unfair”, Gerovasili said.
Greece in July accepted a three-year, 86-billion-euro ($93-billion) European Union bailout that saved it from crashing out of the eurozone, but came with strict conditions.
“In this country a graduate starts off in the public sector with a salary of 775 euros ($831) a month, or 9,300 euros ($9,974) a year, and we are being told that wages will be frozen for the next decade and that every tax imaginable will be increased”.
An estimated 30,000 people had gathered to protest the austerity.
Recession-hit Greeks took to the streets to denounce the fresh wave of spending cuts and tax hikes promoted in exchange for further worldwide loans under the third bailout.
The unions are angry that the Syriza government has allowed budget cuts, having promised to stand up to them when it was first elected. Buses and trolley buses were providing limited services.
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“The mass participation in the strike … will be our answer to the government’s dogmatic obsession with dead-end and catastrophic policies that have squeezed employees and driven the youth of this country to lose all hope”, GSEE said, according to The Wall Street Journal. The current government, led by the Syriza party with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at its helm, initially rose to power in January by campaigning on an anti-austerity ticket.
