FES BRIEFING THE SITUATION OF TRADE UNIONS IN GREECE Giorgos Bythimitris * September 2021 1. POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FRAME­WORK POLITICAL CONTEXT The New Democracy party government, led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is still riding high in the opinion polls, leading the main opposition party SYRIZA by 12 to 15 percent­age points. The government has been able to capitalise on its successful management of the Covid-19 pandemic in spring last year, although the picture began to change somewhat from the autumn. It did not prove possible to prevent the spread of the pandemic and the national health system re­vealed its chronic weaknesses. In the meantime, government measures have become inconsistent and confusing, while the economic recession has deepened, with private sector em­ployees once again facing unemployment or underemploy­ment. SYRIZA managed to secure 31 per cent of the vote in 2019 elections but has not yet recovered from this defeat. The social democratic party KINAL(formerly PASOK) backed gov­ernment decisions in the first phase of the pandemic, but more recent disappointing developments both with Covid-19 and on the economic front have shifted the leadership’s line. Despite his populist rhetoric Kyriakos Velopoulos, leader of the nationalist party Elliniki Lysi(Greek Solution), differs considera­bly from the far-right mobilisation and violent activism of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn(GD). The party thankfully failed to surpass the 3 per cent electoral threshold, and in October 2020, in front of the supreme court of Greece(Areios Pagos), its leading members were found guilty of managing a criminal organisation. * Giorgos Bithymitris is a Researcher(Grade C) at the National Centre for Social Research, Institute for Social Research. He holds a PhD in Social Policy from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. His research interests focus on trade unions, class identities, stratification and inequalities. He has published a book on trade unionism, and several articles on trade unions, class politics, political discourses, and class identities. Under Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a politician identified with liberal centrism, the party of New Democracy has attracted many centrist voters(mostly from PASOK). Mitsotakis has also tried to consolidate such moves towards the political centre ground, appointing progressive politicians and former PASOK ministers to his cabinet. Nonetheless, this shift has started to fade with the advent of multiple challenges: migration, Turkish aggres­sion, the health crisis and the economic crisis. The law-and­order agenda has once again come to the fore, migration pol­icy has been toughened up, the media landscape is now further dominated by pro-government framing and the persis­tent transparency problem has been exacerbated. In a context of uncertainty and rising complaints against health-care sys­tem inadequacies, labour market deregulation, and low levels of accountability and democratic sensitivity, the government’s responses signal a return to conservative politics. Mitsotakis’ key policies can be summarised as follows: eco­nomic growth achieved through resort to the EU Recovery and Resilience Fund and additional funding form REACT-EU, along with rising levels of foreign investment, structural re­forms, tax and duty cuts, modernisation of the state and cut­ting of red tape through digitalisation, and improvement of internal security. The National Recovery Plan can hardly be considered path-breaking, however, as there is little about so­cial justice and climate change. Moreover, the government has made no effort to engage the social partners and to broaden the legitimacy of the reforms. On the other hand, government decisions seem more and more contingent upon the party’s right-wing hardliners. Most notably, the police crackdown on squatters and the repeal of the so-called‘university asylum’ law, which had prevented the police from gaining access to university campuses, have given Mitsotakis high approval ratings across party lines. Only a few months after the Greek parliament repealed the academic asylum rule, the government passed legislation that allows the establishment of special police on university campuses as part of education reforms. 1