Tempers flared at the main Greek port of Piraeus Wednesday where thousands of tourists were trapped by a unionist blockade on ferries, the latest in a wave of strikes against austerity cuts.
Defying a late-night court order declaring the strike illegal, scores of Communist-affiliated unionists proceeded with the one-day protest which has so far prevented 11 ferries from leaving and stranded thousands of passengers.
Shouting matches broke out between strikers and many exasperated travellers -- mostly Greeks -- who chanted "shame, shame", an AFP photographer said.
Television footage showed small groups of unionists stationed on ferry ramps to prevent boarding, with a few police officers trying to keep the two sides from coming to blows.
"You're a bunch of yobs and drones," a young woman shouted.
"We want to sail," another man said. "There's going to be a thrashing."
The coastguard said it would not attempt to enforce the court order and break the blockade to keep violence from erupting in the harbour.
"Operationally this is a risky mixture, having unionists and passengers on the scene," coastguard chief Athanassios Bousios told Flash Radio. "We do not want to make things worse."
The ferries cannot depart for safety reasons in any case, as ship engineers are among the strikers, Bousios told the station.
The Communist-affiliated Pame union, which ignored calls from the sailors' union to lift the blockade and is holding other protests in main Greek cities, said the action will last until early Thursday.
A few hundred Pame protesters marched through the Athens centre Wednesday, chanting slogans against the European Union and the International Monetary Fund who are involved in a Greek debt bailout but are also seen here to have imposed unprecedented budget belt-tightening on the country.
Another Pame street protest was held in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
"What is paramount here is to prevent my child and yours from working as a slave, not going for a dive on Mykonos," Pame unionist Yiannis Manousogiannakis told Flash Radio, referring to the popular holiday island that draws many thousands of travellers every summer.
Rail access to Athens airport was also disrupted as railway workers were holding a series of two-hour work stoppages until Thursday.
Strikes and street protests have hit Greece in recent months over draconian pay and pension cuts, bringing havoc to the vital tourism industry.
Tourism contributes 17 percent of Greece's gross domestic product and is essential to the debt-hit country's efforts to revive its flagging economy.
"Travellers and operators alike are going through a great ordeal," said George Telonis, vice president of the Greek association of travel agencies (HATTA).
"This constitutes defamation for the country," he told AFP.
A 24-hour strike by TV journalists against the budget cuts forced the state channel to interrupt its regular programming. The fifth general strike since the start of the year has been called for June 29.
Seeking to stem a wave of cancellations, the government this week promised to reimburse stranded travellers.
"The Greek state will ensure that (travellers') stay will be covered, so that they will know that Greece as a destination will cost them no more than what they had originally planned," Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos who has overall responsibility for tourism said on Monday.
Tens of millions of euros have already been lost from cancellations according to government estimates.
Greece adopted the austerity cuts to secure a 110-billion-euro (135-billion-dollar) bailout loan from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund and save itself from default.
It is struggling to reduce debt of nearly 300 billion euros whilst mired in a deepening recession.
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
