Alexis Tsipras, president of the Greek Left Coalition party ELAS, said on Tuesday that unemployment benefits are not a form of state generosity but a contributory insurance payment that workers have earned, during a visit to the central offices of Greece's Public Employment Service, known as DYPA.
Tsipras made the remarks after meeting with employees of the Federation of OAED Employees, the union representing DYPA staff, and the agency's president, Giorgos Makrakis, at DYPA's headquarters. He was reacting to a recent statement by a government spokesperson on unemployment benefits.
He said that nowhere in the world do government spokespeople state their own personal opinions, adding that if that had truly been the case here, Marinakis would not still be in his post after all the recent uproar. He said the fact that the Prime Minister had not intervened showed the statement reflected a plan by Mitsotakis rather than Marinakis' personal view. He added that New Democracy officials, including the party's secretary and Makis Voridis, had backed the remarks with statements along the same lines.
Benefit is insurance, not charity, Tsipras says
Tsipras said the essence of the government's position was that unemployment benefit sustains people who choose to remain unemployed. He rejected that framing, insisting that unemployment benefit is not state generosity but a contributory insurance benefit.
He said that if any rationalization of spending was needed, as Voridis had suggested, it should not target the benefits paid to hundreds of thousands of workers, particularly seasonal workers in tourism, catering, farm work and construction. Instead, he said, rationalization was needed in direct contract awards, closed tenders, waste, kickbacks and corruption.
He said he supported a demand coming from every corner and every sector of the workforce that these policy choices remain on paper and never be put into practice.
"Anti-labor and inhuman," Tsipras says
He described the plan as anti-labor and inhuman, and said society had a duty to raise a shield of protection around workers' basic gains. He said that, as one of the workers at the meeting had rightly put it, the alternative would be a descent into a logic of cannibalism, which had to be prevented.
Also attending the meeting were Dionysis Temboneras, ELAS's labor affairs coordinator, and Nektaria-Eleftheria Angelaki, the deputy coordinator.
After the meeting, Tsipras visited the area housing the workers' radio station and spoke to DYPA employees from across Greece, before holding a separate meeting with staff from the agency's central service.
Background: ELAS and DYPA
Tsipras served as Greek prime minister from 2015 to 2019 as leader of SYRIZA before founding ELAS, a new left-wing party. DYPA, formerly known as OAED, is Greece's public employment agency, responsible for paying unemployment benefits and running job placement and training programs.
