Wall Street Journal
August 8, 2014
Most weekdays, Thanassis Tziombras, a 50-year-old worker at the shipbuilding zone here at the main Greek port of Piraeus, is up before dawn and out looking for work by 6 a.m.
Some 40 minutes away, in the posh Athens suburb of Psychico, Constantinos Tsimas, a 54-year-old U.S.-educated marketing consultant, wakes up to another day of working the phones and emails seeking clients.
There is a social gulf between these two men, but they are united in one thing: the financial and psychological struggle that comes with being older and unemployed in a country where the economy has shrunk by almost a quarter in six years.
Greece's economy has taken such a brutal beating that it is in a category apart from other European countries suffering through the recession. Where Greece lost some 25% of its economic output, Spain lost about 6%. Experts say that, even as the Greek economy begins to recover, the shock has been so severe that older workers are unlikely to ever hold full-time jobs again.
Unlike in other parts of Europe, Greek reforms have largely removed provisions that protected older workers. In Spain and Italy labor-market regulations favoring baby-boomers over their children are still largely in place, entrenching the so-called two-tier labor market. But in Greece, everyone seeking work largely faces similarly poor odds, said Raymond Torres, head of research at the International Labor Organization, the United Nations labor agency.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment