Staff at the Henry Dunant Hospital in Athens are still working despite being owed five months pay. The hospital’s new management team, parachuted in in February, has brought in a 15 percent pay cut – agreed with unions – but cannot even pay this until a tranche of financing comes through.
The hospital is in this predicament because it is run by a charitable foundation which used to get around 5 million euros ($6.3 million) annually. These funds have dried up following the euro zone crisis. The private medical procedures which helped boost revenues have also shrunk dramatically.
“Some people are working because they hope their pay will come through. There’s also a problem with finding another job elsewhere. And there’s also a sentimental thing where they’re attached to their jobs,” Constantinos Mavrantonis, head of General & Colo-rectal Surgery at the hospital, told CNBC.
One of Greece’s best-known newspapers, Eleftherotypia (or “freedom of the press”), probably the closest Greek equivalent to The Guardian, all but closed down in December after the family business which backed it ran out of cash. Its staff haven’t been paid since August, yet around 600 of them (down from 850 last August) are planning two special editions of the newspaper around the election this weekend.
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