Roger Boyes, Athens

Greece has been cut off from the outside world for 24 hours as angry public sector workers brought the country’s airports, ferry terminals and overland border crossings to a standstill.

Revolutionary songs blared through loudspeakers in central Athens and tens of thousands of strikers chanted “Traitors! Traitors!” in front of the Greek parliament as they protested against government austerity measures designed to cut the country’s budget deficit of 12.7 per cent to 2.7 per cent in three short years.

The moves, which will entail a hiring freeze in the public sector, a 10 per cent cut in supplementary pay and an increase in the retirement age are supposed to send a signal to the rest of the eurozone that Greece is intent on getting its house in order.

But the leftist unions are determined to make a stand against the Socialist government of George Papandreou.

“I always considered myself a socialist, ” said Petros Georgakis, an IT expert for a government ministry who was chanting anti-government slogans close to Athens university, “now I feel disgust. The minimum wage is being eroded and we will be driven into poverty as a society to please the plutocrats and the people in Brussels.”

The public sector workers union ADEDY holds sway over some half a million workers and it is determined on Wednesday to show its power.

All flights were cancelled–because air traffic controllers refused to work–and tens of thousands of tourists were stranded. Some gathered in little distressed knots outside the empty, echoing terminal of Athens airport.

The port of Piraeus is closed blocking all contact between the Greek mainland and the outlying islands. Buses stayed in their depots. Some bank and shop workers shared cars into the centre of the capital and the large number of young women in trainers indicated that they had walked to work. Schools are closed all day. Hospitals are working only on an emergency basis.

But for the most part the country ground to a standstill. The tourist infrastructure, one of Greece’s main sources of income, collapsed. Museums were shut, the ticket collectors to sights such as the Parthenon simply locked the gates and disappeared.

“They had promised the rich would pay but instead they take the money from the poor,” said Ilias Iliopoulos, head of the ADEDY union. “This is what we are opposing, not the attempt to deal with the crisis.” In fact, the government is trying to make the cuts appear to be socially balanced: there will be tax investigations into high earning but low tax paying doctors, dentists and lawyers. Under a plan announced on Tuesday, property owners with houses worth more than €800,000 will pay 1 per cent of the house’s value in tax every year.

The only public servants visibly on the job, in Athens at least, were riot policemen. They were tucked away in the side streets, guarding ministries and monitoring a part of the capital where riots first erupted in December 2008.

The fear is that the sedate, tightly organised union demonstrations would spread to the disaffected young. Photographs of torched cars or stone throwing protestors would send exactly the wrong signal to EU leaders as they meet on Thursday to discuss how Greece can be helped through its crisis.

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