Chinese Port Operator Crushing Greek Labor

There's a kind of Greek deli place near the office called Port of Piraeus, which also turns out to be the name of a very real port in Greece which was recently leased by the Chinese port operating firm Cosco. Their key business innovation has been to import more Chinese-style working conditions:

He says workers were told by supervisors to urinate into the sea, rather than taking toilet breaks. Those operating straddle carriers had to take cups up into their cabins to urinate into, and he says they were not given breaks, either, despite the clear dangers of operating at such a height for so long.

The worker says he was paid 600 euros a month — about 50 euros each shift — around half the salary at the neighboring Greek-operated pier, with no extra money for working night shifts or weekends. There was no set schedule; he was kept on 24-hour call for nine months.

That's ugly stuff. But Greece has taken a big negative shock to its economy. And without the possibility of spreading the pain around with a currency devaluation, tons of people have been thrown out of work. Then the austerity budgeting has created a big secondary shock leading to more joblessness. The upshot is a big pool of people for whom, much like Chinese people, these bad working conditions are worth putting up with. This wouldn't have been fully avoidable under any policy dynamic, but austerity fervor and the huge structural problems with the euro are making it much worse than it needs to be.