Greece - society begins to crack under harsh measures

Every working day, more than a hundred people crowd around the entrance of the merchant and passenger boats' reconstruction industry, well known as 'The Zone', in the southern suburb of Attiki. Most of them are unemployed steel workers and torch welders, who wait desperately from the early hours of the morning for an announcement of jobs offered on a daily basis on the ships that dock at the port. "Tensions often run high among them," says Makis Kistikidis, a steel worker with 32 years of experience in the Zone, amid a scuffle between some workers scrambling to grab a two-day job slot. "This is not the worst of days," Kistikidis says. "Very often, there are no jobs at all. Many of these people haven't had more than five or six days of work since the beginning of this year, and no more than 100 working days since 2008." While public debate is Greece is focused on austerity measures to cut the country's ballooning budget deficit, little attention has been paid to the societal impact of growing unemployment and how these harsh measures are squeezing salaries of ordinary citizens.