Griekenland zet leger in om staking trukkers te stoppen (en)
Greek lorry drivers have backed down and called off a strike that had paralysed the country, crippled its travel industry and stranded hundreds of thousands of tourists - but only after the government mobilised the army to make fuel deliveries.
The drivers had refused to back down in the face of a mobilisation order from the government on Wednesday and clashed with police at the Transport Ministry on Thursday, but voted by a slim majority to return to work after the prime minister called up the army to make fuel deliveries to hospitals, power stations and airports.
"This is an unpleasant decision … but the country cannot afford adventures in the middle of the summer," said Prime Minister George Papandreou.
It is only the fourth time the army has been mobilised, normally only called out to respond to natural disasters, in times of war - or civil unrest - since the return of democracy to Greece in 1974.
"Taking into consideration the problems that have been created by not supplying the market with food and petrol and other products, and with a sense of responsibility, we decided on the suspension of the strike by a narrow majority of votes," Giorgos Tzortzatos, representing the general assembly of lorry federations told reporters on Sunday.
Fuel supplies had severely dwindled, with some 95 percent of petrol stations in Athens empty and a similar figure in the nation's second city, Thessaloniki.
Thousands of tourists have been stranded as a result of the fuel shortages, with holidaymakers cancelling bookings and even abandoning rented cars at the side of the road as they run out of petrol.
The tourism industry represents a full 20 percent of the country's GDP and provides one in five jobs.
A bumper season this year is crucial for the country's finances and hence its creditworthiness and ability to meet its debt obligations, and the sector was already disrupted by industrial action in May that has scared off many travellers,
The lorry-drivers' strike also came amid a work-to-rule campaign of air traffic controllers that had resulted in the cancellation of delay of dozens of flights.
Delivery of essential supplies had also ground to a halt and resulted in some 12 peach canneries - a key Greek industry - shutting their doors for want of fuel.
The army mobilisation came after drivers ignored an emergency decree ordering them to return to work and imposed martial law on the sector. Drivers faced arrest, loss of their licences and up to five years in prison, but they had refused to back down.
Indeed, following the emergency decree, some 500 strikers attempted to storm the transport ministry and clashed with riot police who managed to chase them away only after employing tear gas.
However, the lorry drivers' union has warned they are only temporarily ending their industrial action to return to the bargaining table with the government over the liberalisation of their industry and threatened further strike action if talks do not satisfy their demands.
At the demand of the EU and the International Monetary Fund, the government is attempting to liberalise the so-called closed profession of lorry-driving, alongside those of lawyers, engineers, taxi-drivers and pharmacists.
As part of a programme in return for a €110 billion bail-out from the EU and IMF, Athens must impose a package of draconian austerity measures. The two lenders are using the crisis as an opportunity to push for a liberalisation of these closed professions.
In the case of lorry drivers, the government wants to open up the sale of licences by making many more available. They hope that by doing so, it will increase competition in the sector and push down freight costs.
But the drivers have to pay the government between €100,000 and €200,000 for a licence. While they are able to sell the licence on at the end of their careers, they complain that they often have to sell their house to get started. The government plans would bankrupt them, they say.
Although it has taken putting soldiers on the streets in an echo of the army rule Greeks had to endure for decades, the back-down by drivers is a major victory for the centre-left government, keen to prove to markets that the country is not "ungovernable" and that Athens is capable of forcing through international lenders' demands in the face of militant opposition.
In a sign of further battles to come however, the newspaper of the KKE Communist party - the far left in the country remains a sizeable mainstream political force - said that the government intended to "smash every striker's right."
"There is nothing left but to gather forces and fight," the paper said, according to a report in the Guardian.