Greek Layoffs Lead to Violence

The situation is Greece seems to be getting worse by the second. As more and more people lose their jobs things are going from painful to violent.

Take for example the curious case of one Mr. Dimitris Manikas. Dimitris had worked in the same trashcan factory for about 30 years. He was going to retire soon, and was expecting to marry again in the near future. By all accounts he was a normal man.  If anything, he may have been a little bit overly dedicated to his job, after all he did have the name of his factory tattooed on his arm.

Then came the layoffs. His jobs was made redundant and he found himself without an income and with few prospects for work. Dimitris cancelled his wedding and began to wonder if he was going to lose his home. The stress and the pressure built up and when he could take no more Dimitris did something rather extreme. He got out his hunting rifle, drove back to the site of his now former employer and began to shoot. He managed to injure both his former boss and a former co-worker. From that point on an 11-hour stand off with the police ensued, during with Dimitris held three people hostage. Eventually, he surrendered and was taken into custody.

When he talked to a reporter for the Huffington Post Dimitris said the following about what had driven him to take such extreme actions:

“I was nothing without a job. I was like a dead man walking…I only needed a few more years to retire. Is this a time to be unemployed? And if I looked for a job, the way things are now, the way politicians have done things, what would I get — 400 Euros? ….My life was fine, I was ready to get married for a third time. I had already bought the wedding rings. But my world was turned upside down. You can’t do anything without money.”

People who knew him said that he was prone to erratic behavior before this incident, but never anything violent. Then again, he is not the only Greek to be taking extreme actions in response to job losses. For those of you who missed our earlier coverage here is an excerpt:

“Those cuts, which are leading to layoffs, are also leading to some really serious consequences for the people out there. The relatively massive job cutbacks that came as part of the European bailout deal has left the company with no choice but to let go of a serious amount of working. According to the reports the government will be forced to shut down departments will be shut down completely and a high number of workers, up to 15,000 according to estimates. These reports have worker protesting, and some people have even tried to commit acts of self-harm.”

So give the truly massive number of jobs cuts that need to be made in order to put the Greek economy on the path to right, many of which have been mandated by the bail out money that they received from other members of the European Union, there may be more sad reports like this one to come.