The 24-hour strike halted rail services across the country and disrupted urban transport in the Greek capital. Ships were held up in ports near Athens as rail and hospital workers, ship and ferry crew, and school teachers all walked off the job.
But other protesters joined the march,
including students, who wrote the names of the dead on the ground in front of the heavily guarded parliament.
A year ago, a passenger train from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki collided head-on with a freight train, killing 57 people and stirring mass protests over what many viewed as the result of decades of neglect of the rail sector.
Churches across the country rang their bells 57 times on Wednesday
to represent the number of those killed, many of them young students returning home after a long weekend.
There were brief clashes between police and protesters in Athens and a similar protest in Thessaloniki.
Hours after the February 2023 crash, a station master was arrested.
Dozens have since been charged in connection with the case, which is currently under investigation by a local judge. The government says a trial is likely to begin in June.
After the crash, the conservative government had promised to reform the railway and make it safer. But a year later, crash experts and railway officials said that safety systems are still not
fully functioning.
“As a prime minister, as a citizen, and as a father, I share the country’s grief,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised address on Wednesday, promising to heal the state’s chronic shortcomings.
Demonstrators also protested against what they said were insufficient pay rises, the first after 14 years in the public sector. They say the increases are not big enough to offset the impact of rising living costs. Workers want a 10% across-the-board rise instead and more hirings.
The conservative government has increased the minimum monthly salary by 20% to EUR 780 (USD 844) since it took office in 2019 and has vowed to lift it to EUR 950 by 2027.
However, the country’s monthly salaries still lag behind the European Union average.
