Comments by "joe k" (@joek600) on "Real Reporter"
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@fridest By grocery store I guess you refer to your equivalent of ‘’magazin’’ and not to a supermarket. Anyway I will try to answer for both. Most of the neighbourhood grocery stores are mom and pap businesses and they maybe have up to 3 employees, but most usually one or two plus the owner who is also working. Supermarkets depending on the size can have 50-60 or more employees.
In most cases they are all considered unskilled workforce and receive the basic salary, which is around 650 euros, pocket money after all the deductions for pension and healthcare/taxes.
Small grocery stores usually they are open in the morning, they close down at midday and open again in the afternoons for about 3 hours. Legally an employee should work for 8 hours but in todays reality, yeah good luck with that. They are also expected to place products, clean the store etc. it is illegal to charge any loses of the store due to negligence or theft to the employee, but one too many and you are out without a job.
The supermarkets are open from 8 in the morning till 9 in the evening. The employees used to work in 8 hours shifts before the neo-liberal onslaught. Now there is a small core of 8 hours employees, those are the privileged ones, that have full labour rights. The majority are 4 hour and 6 hours ‘’part time’’ employees. I used quotes because the majority of them are forced to work for 8 hours most of the time without pay but even when they are given overtime pay this is calculated against them by the state ending up in to raised taxation that normally would refer to ‘’extra’’ income but due to the reality of the situation it’s their normal income. I have a friend who worked as a cashier in one of the largest supermarket chains in Greece and when she asked me something about her taxes in the springtime when we are filling our income declarations, I totally freaked out because she was getting less than half of my income but had to pay a lot more taxes without owing any real estate. In the recent past the government changed the law where you were entitled an automatic raise for every grouping of three years term that you have as an employee in a certain field, and that was transferable to a possibly new employer. Now you get a raise if and when your employer feels like regardless of your years of expertise in that sector. Your salary will be the product of a negotiation with your employer. As Achilles said to Hector’s pleadings for delivering his dead body to his parents, ‘’since when the lions bargain with the sheep?’’. The employees again cannot be charged for any theft or damage but as I said that can be the cause of being fired.
I have seen many times in supermarkets cashiers or security placing products or advertisements, something that’s clearly not their job description.
Average rent for a three room apartment 350-400 euros. Average cost of utilities in the present situation is around 250 euros if you are very careful. The average internet/telephone flat rate is 30-35 euros, the cheapest mobile connection is around 20 euros and via card it’s 13 euros per month.
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@fridest in Greece VAT is 24% some categories of essential food is at 13%. In supermarkets and other businesses of the kind it’s also forbidden to sit, the employees are taking their 20 min break but only in one chain that I know ( a friend works there) they are allowed to sit in the cafeteria that is on the last floor and take something for lunch. The government in 2010 ( same party as today different prime minister) introduced a law where people under 30 were payed 550 euros. The basic salary back then was I think 680 for unskilled hand labour and 750 for an office job. The law was supposed to give the incentive of hiring young people so the government could make the horrible youth unemployment statistics look better. Guess what happened. Many companies and not just small ones even Coca Cola did it, fired their existing personnel to the degree that it was possible, and replaced it with young people working for this new lowered wage. That carried on until 2017 if im not mistaken, I remember that it was one of the very few things that the Tsipras government managed to reverse, but the universal again for all age groups basic wage remained at the lowered 650 euros. Basically you can’t exist which that kind of money and that’s the reason why most Greek young people stay with their parents even after 30 years old. It’s very difficult to rent alone, if you don’t have financial help from your parents or a relationship that will move in and split the costs. It’s virtually impossible to buy an apartment without an eternity of debt and even if you are ok with that the bank no longer provide loans. Despite the fact that they were saved from bankruptcy 3 times with state money, instead of being nationalised since they failed to keep their house in order, they remained private institutions with the promise of providing liquidity in the market. Well guess what. They lied and nothing happened to them. The only way that the situation did not lead to generalised tragedy was that Greeks for the most part still own their own home, thus providing shelter to their set to fail kids and also for the most part the private debt was relatively low. For example the generalised use of credit cards and bank loans in Greece became a thing in the late 90’s before that credit cards was an oddity for very rich people and even then most shops under a certain level could not accept them. The banks were not giving out loans because drachma was a soft currency, but that made it very easy to build or buy your own house. It’s those houses that the neo-liberals are after now basically.
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