Chris Avramidis: Tempi strike marks a golden page in history of Greece's labor movement

We continue our discussion on the mass protests that took place in Greece on the second anniversary of the Tempi train accident. In our first interview, we spoke with architect and academic Stavros Stavrides, focusing on participation in the protests through the lens of space and commons.

In this interview, we sat down with journalist Chris Avramidis to discuss his field observations on mass participation, police violence, the government’s crisis management, and the media's stance. Avramidis emphasizes that the ongoing social movements provide significant insights into the future of Greek society.

'The largest strike in the country’s history'

Firstly, on the second anniversary of the Tempi train crash, especially in Athens and in other parts of the country, what events took place? Which areas were you in, and what did you witness?

What happened on the second anniversary of the Tempi train crash is something we have never seen before in our lives. According to estimates, even if we only consider the mobilizations within Greece, we are likely talking about the largest participation in the history of the Greek state. Many estimates suggest that the protests were even larger than those that followed the fall of the dictatorship. Particularly in rural areas, where political dynamics are usually more conservative, the scale and presence of the mobilizations were unprecedented in both size and character.

Another remarkable aspect was something we have undoubtedly never seen before: protests took place in cities all around the world, where Greek communities gathered alongside supporters to demonstrate. From Australia to China and Canada, countless images and videos spread across the public sphere, showing thousands of people sending a message demanding justice and rejecting any attempt to cover up the responsibilities for this crime.

Personally,  I participated in and covered the demonstrations in Athens, where it was practically impossible to move from one side to the other due to the sheer size of the crowd. Public transport workers went on strike that day, but in coordination with the victims' families, they kept some services running so that people could reach the protests. However, the participation was so massive that people could not fit into the transport system, and thousands walked for kilometers from all parts of Athens toward Syntagma Square. When viewed from drone footage, streams of people could be seen flowing into a massive sea of protesters in the city center.

What’s striking is that this was not just a typical protest gathering. It took place on a working day, meaning that people had to go on strike to participate. Millions chose to do so, despite the financial hardships they face, with rising living costs and difficulties making ends meet. They willingly sacrificed a day's wage to stand up and fight. This marks a golden page in the history of the labor movement. The largest strike in the country’s history is now a reality.

In Thessaloniki and especially in Athens, the police violently attacked the protests and carried out numerous arrests. Whether in response to clashes with hundreds of outraged protesters or without any provocation at all, the police attempted to disperse the demonstrations by any means necessary. Here, we see a phenomenon we haven’t witnessed in years: despite the brutal police repression, thousands of protesters remained for hours, resisting and insisting on continuing the demonstration in front of the parliament. Videos of the police violently attacking protesters throughout the day have circulated across the country. When questioned, the government fully defended the police, claiming they acted with composure and professionalism—despite the blatant abuses recorded in dozens of videos. Naturally, this was a green light from the government to the police for what would follow in the demonstrations in the coming days.

How were these protests and the general strike covered by mainstream media in Greece? In the news reports, did you come across a critical perspective questioning the responsibility for the crash or the government’s stance?

It is very interesting that public outrage reached such a level that even the mainstream media were eventually forced to go with the flow. At some point, when everyone was furiously discussing both the decisions that led to the dangerous state of the railway system and the subsequent attempt to cover up responsibilities, even dominant media outlets had to address the issue. The only exception was the state broadcaster, which continued to downplay and suppress coverage—but we will discuss that further below.

Of course, there were journalists who opposed the protests and the demands of the victims’ families, but they were vastly outnumbered and had little space to influence public discourse. However, before reaching this point, most mainstream media initially played along with the government's narrative. Not necessarily through blatant propaganda, but mainly through silence and omission. One of the most shocking audio recordings—a passenger’s voice captured moments after the crash—took several months to be published, despite pleas from some of the victims' parents. It only gained nationwide attention after being widely shared by smaller media outlets and social media users. It was only then that the major networks started to cover it, allowing the entire country to hear it. Until that moment, the dominant media had aligned themselves with the government’s stance: “Who still cares about Tempi?”

When a parliamentary inquiry was launched, exposing blatant attempts to cover up responsibility, the mainstream media largely ignored it. The state broadcaster, as if guided by an invisible censoring hand, did everything possible to prevent the public from hearing about the actions of the victims' families.

The stance of the mainstream media evolved over time, adapting to changing circumstances. When public pressure made it impossible to ignore the issue without losing credibility, they reported on it—but often with specific framing. In the first days following the tragedy, both the government and the media blamed the crash on individual errors by the stationmaster, completely downplaying the role of malfunctioning safety systems and chronic understaffing, which had left a single stationmaster responsible for a complex night shift on February 28, 2023. Later, as public outrage grew, the media were forced to highlight safety issues—but only as long as people were in the streets protesting. Once mobilizations started to decline, they shifted towards a strategy of collective amnesia.

Now, with the entire country discussing and mobilizing around Tempi for two consecutive months, ignoring the demands for justice is no longer an option for anyone who wishes to maintain even a shred of credibility.

What do you attribute the presence of such large crowds on the streets during the second anniversary to? What social, economic, or political factors lie behind this widespread participation?

The massive turnout in these demonstrations will be the subject of extensive study for years to come. Especially considering that for nearly two years, apart from one or two mobilizations, all others had been moderate or even quite small in scale.

Undoubtedly, the spark that ignited this movement was the chilling audio recording that was made public a few weeks after the first major rally on January 26. In the recording, a student passenger named Fratzeska can be heard speaking to her childhood friend, Marthi, with whom she was traveling, as the fire approached them. The recording ends with Fratzeska saying, “Marthi, I love you.” It was the last moment of their lives.

However, even before this, there had already been a deep accumulation of public anger across a broad section of Greek society—both over the government’s handling of the Tempi disaster and due to other factors, primarily the worsening economic conditions for middle- and lower-income groups. For years, people have watched the government attempt to cover up its responsibility. Authorities hastily filled in the crash site with debris, scandalously doing so without first collecting key forensic evidence. As a result, human remains were lost, leaving families in perpetual agony over whether anything of their loved ones was ever recovered. One student’s body was completely lost—nothing of her was ever found.

All of this has unfolded under the shadow of strong evidence suggesting that the freight train involved in the crash was illegally transporting flammable materials used for fuel adulteration, such as xylene and benzene. So now, the entire country is asking: What made a state—one that had delayed implementing crucial safety systems for over 10 or even 20 years—suddenly act with such unprecedented speed to complete the one task of covering up a crime scene?

Moreover, in the parliamentary inquiry, the ruling party refused to summon key witnesses who could have provided critical testimony, and they abruptly shut down the proceedings. Meanwhile, as the government carried out these outrageous maneuvers, the victims’ families spearheaded an extraordinary movement. Some of them even formed an association that has undertaken a wide range of actions: from street protests and solidarity concerts to legal battles, events at the European Parliament, media representation, and alliances with labor unions and student associations. Slowly but surely, more and more relatives are stepping forward, transforming their grief into a powerful force for justice.

For the broader public, the Tempi disaster symbolizes everything that is broken in this country. The corruption of the state, the political establishment, and the judiciary. The crumbling privatized services built on neglected infrastructure. The endless delays in public works that serve the interests of large contractors, and, of course, the fact that profits for the most powerful are often deemed more important than human life itself. The chronic understaffing of public services. The lack of oversight and accountability when powerful interests commit crimes. And, of course, the right-wing neoliberal government of New Democracy itself.

Yet beyond the failing public services, people are also suffering from a continuously deteriorating standard of living. Real wages in Greece, when adjusted for inflation and stagnant salaries due to the absence of collective bargaining agreements, have left many struggling to make ends meet. Greece ranks last in the European Union in terms of real wages, alongside Bulgaria. Banks and investment funds are evicting people from their homes. Supermarkets are installing anti-theft devices even on baby formula. Energy companies are cutting off electricity en masse. These are just a few fragments of contemporary Greece that illustrate the underlying conditions.

The Tempi audio recording and the call for protests activated this latent potential for mass mobilization.

Naturally, there is also the deep emotional connection to the victims. Everyone has taken that train at some point. Many students lost their classmates, and hundreds of thousands felt as if they had lost the person sitting next to them in the university lecture hall. Parents across the country shed tears because they saw other parents lose their children. And all of us who protested felt as if 57 voices were crying out for justice.

In the theory of social movements, this is known as the process of Attribution of Similarity, and I believe we have never before witnessed such a powerful activation of this process in Greece.

Railway workers’ unions say they have long been raising critical issues such as inadequate infrastructure, staff shortages, and security gaps. Which interest groups or political agendas might have played a role in allowing these warnings to go unanswered for so many years? If we also include the period before Mitsotakis, how would you explain the failure to implement these reforms until now?

Safety systems were not implemented because some individuals profited immensely from these delays while others turned a blind eye. For example, one of the key contracts for railway safety systems, the notorious Contract 717, was granted nine extensions, with contractors even receiving additional funds from the state. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office stated that if this contract had been implemented, the accident would have been unequivocally prevented. Additionally, they asserted that the accused parties served the financial interests of the consortium of contractors.

This situation underscores the deep entanglement of powerful contractors, the media, and the judiciary. How could the media have properly covered railway workers’ warnings when many outlets rely on advertisements from these same powerful contractors? Or when their ownership is intertwined with the same elite circles as the contractors themselves? Another critical issue lies within the judicial system. The notorious delays in court rulings and the almost guaranteed final vindication of contractors contribute to their profit margins, forming a recurring pattern in Greek capitalism. From the Thessaloniki Metro project, which ended up costing €3 billion instead of €1 billion, to various smaller projects, a familiar cycle emerges. Disputes between contractors over different sections of a project—or between contractors and the state—inevitably resolve in favor of the contractors' bank accounts. A contractor or the state files a lawsuit, the judiciary delays the ruling while the project remains stalled, and regulatory bodies fail to monitor the major contractors, sometimes due to understaffing. When a decision is finally made, it often includes financial compensation for the contractor. This incentivizes the same cycle to repeat, again and again, until it reaches a breaking point.

Another dimension of this issue is that railway workers’ strikes were consistently ruled illegal by the judiciary, partly due to internal political alignments but primarily due to the anti-labor legal framework imposed by successive neoliberal policies.

These are structural issues of the Greek state, exacerbated during the implementation of neoliberal austerity measures between 2010 and 2015, and worsened even further under the current neoliberal government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

A long-standing example of systemic failure is the railway sector’s fragmentation into multiple entities in 2007, following pressure from the European Union. Subsequently, some parts—primarily passenger services and a large share of freight operations—were privatized, while the infrastructure entity remained state-owned but severely underfunded due to austerity measures. This created confusion, conflicting interests, and a disastrous division of responsibilities. For instance, the European Train Control System (ETCS) and the GSM-R communication system had not been installed even by 2023, and they remain uninstalled today. This failure results directly from the sector’s fragmentation and the conflicting priorities of different entities.

For example, the private passenger rail company, Hellenic Train, kept investments at zero and operated outdated train cars with low safety standards. Moreover, Hellenic Train receives tens of millions of euros in subsidies each year to continue operating the trains. Meanwhile, OSE, the public railway infrastructure entity responsible for maintenance, received only €25 million in funding from the Mitsotakis government in 2022, despite requiring at least €50 million.

Another critical issue is chronic understaffing. Of the 2,100 permanent positions that should have been filled in OSE, only one-third were staffed in 2023 when the accident occurred. Shockingly, despite the tragedy, this number has since declined by 25% in the last two years, further illustrating the extent of the ongoing neoliberal policies’ impact on public safety and infrastructure.

According to some observers, this is the first time since coming to power that the Mitsotakis Government has been under such serious political pressure. In your view, how is the government attempting to cope with the public anger triggered by the train crash, and is there indeed a significant weakening?

The government's decline is undeniable. In the polls, its estimated vote share has dropped below 25% for the first time in years, and even half of New Democracy voters believe there has been a cover-up.

Analyzing the government's response is difficult, as it has shifted its political stance four or five times in the past month, oscillating between hard-right rhetoric and more conciliatory tones. At times, it has taken an aggressive stance—even against the victims' families—while at other times, it has claimed that protests were actually demanding the continuation of the government’s work "to take Greece even higher." This statement sparked widespread ridicule, as it seemed the Prime Minister was reinterpreting the protests against him as expressions of support.

In any case, the government appears to have softened its position on dismissing responsibility, now admitting that there are indeed failings. Regarding the illicit cargo—suspected of worsening the explosion and fire—a year ago, the government dismissed such claims as conspiracy theories. Now, it has acknowledged that this possibility might actually be true.

These shifts in rhetoric are likely influenced by internal power dynamics within New Democracy, with the more far-right factions taking an aggressive approach, while the more moderate voices step in to make softer statements.

However, despite all this, New Democracy is doing nothing substantial to improve the railway system. And when we, as journalists, ask about this, they attack us instead. 

'Climate of defeat is beginning to shift'

How would you assess the stance of opposition parties regarding attributing political responsibility for the train crash to the government and showing solidarity with the protests? Do you think the opposition has effectively managed this process, or has it been more passive than expected?

Most opposition parties undoubtedly see an opportunity in all of this and are calling for participation in the protests. However, each party tries to shape the movement to fit its own agenda while avoiding mention of very specific issues that might expose its past political choices or challenge powerful economic interests.

Since the 2008 crisis, Greece has been known to have a strong tradition of street protests. Have social movements, strikes, and demonstrations brought about tangible changes in the political and economic structures? In your opinion, could this latest wave of protests have a transformative impact on the country’s future?

From 2010 to 2015, the standard of living in Greece declined more than in any other country in the world, while at the same time, the country experienced the largest and most frequent protests relative to its population. This deep defeat, combined with SYRIZA’s betrayal in the 2015 referendum—where the people voted against the memorandum, yet the government implemented it anyway—has left the labor and social movements significantly weakened and people deeply disillusioned.

In fact, scientific studies (see Altiparmakis) have measured Greece as the country with the highest rate of social movement defeats in relation to the number of protests and campaigns organized.

Apart from some major mobilizations against the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, this is perhaps the first time in 15 years that this climate of defeat is beginning to shift. That makes the current movement even more critical, as its outcome will send a signal to millions of people who want to believe once again that collective action can have meaning—that it can win. (DS/VC/VK)