Employees in Greece’s public health system are preparing for a 48-hour strike on 6–7 November, demanding mass recruitment, increased state budget funding, the abolition of all patient charges, substantial wage increases and protection of their rights.

The explosive combination of staff shortages and degrading wages, which fuels further commercialization, is now being compounded by new plans to merge or close clinics and departments —a move that will only deepen the crisis faced by the people.

Giorgos Sideris, president of the Athens–Piraeus Hospital Doctors’ Union, denounced the criminal policy of commercializing healthcare as well as turning the public health system into a business and patients into customers. He also emphasized the significance of the strike. 

“Doctors’ salaries in the National Health System have been frozen at 2011 levels! (...) We must fight for decent salaries, the restoration of holiday bonuses and the doubling of on-call pay.

One hundred operating theatres in Attica hospitals remain closed due to the authorities’ refusal to hire the necessary staff. If these were open, waiting lists for surgery would disappear. Meanwhile, patients are left on stretchers in corridors for hours. It is vital to demand the immediate reopening of all closed operating theatres, the opening of primary healthcare facilities and the reopening of closed hospitals, as well as adequate state funding without patient charges.

Doctors are being transferred from Attica to the islands, where they work to the point of exhaustion without rest days, while young doctors receive insufficient training. It is time for large-scale, permanent recruitment of doctors and healthcare personnel, who will receive exclusively public, free training and work under humane conditions: 5-day, 6-hour and 30-hour workweeks, with one on-call shift per week.

The government claims that there is no money for staff recruitment or decent salaries, yet it plans to allocate more than €30 billion to NATO armament programmes until 2036 — funds unrelated to the country's defence needs. Everyone on strike!”

31.10.2025