There is obviously no point in attacking personally the Savvas Pumbura, because in a normal working society we don't need to discuss whether work should be paid or not.
What the Savvas Pumbouras was no surprise to me. Not because it came from him. I barely believed he was of those beliefs and I would like to believe, however paranoid, that somewhere he got lost in his thoughts and went astray.
What is not surprising is what he proposed. And that's the problem. Do you know how many people didn't even get mad at this proposal for a job without pay? Just look at the online journalism space on the internet and you'll see.
Most of my age got into the business at a time when the old magazines and newspapers were looking to get into the internet to produce 3 texts a week and get 1200 euros, selling the name they had made in the business. All of them, when they admonished the young people, would tell them «when I started, I worked at a newspaper for 1 year with no money». And they expressed this as something very normal.
And if a 6-month period passed when we were unpaid, he would remind us. «What are you whining about? Here we were at your age, we didn't get paid for a year and we didn't make a sound and look where we are now.» Yes, we have seen the achievements of the old generation of journalists, working on websites for thousands of dollars and their job is 2 hours a day at best, while editors who stream 8-9 hours, get 550 and feel independent, feel good, but if they dare ask to go to 650-700, they get fired so that the people who make a fool of the business can continue to get the money.
So there's the problem. Pumbouras, if he fully embraces what he said, is the average employer, the average old guy in the business.
We were not shocked or bothered by what he said, we didn't find it absurd, because we live in Greece and we are inexperienced people who accepted to spend months unpaid to establish ourselves in the industry, we are still inexperienced people who hear about 700 euros and celebrate thinking that it might be more than we deserve.
In any other country Pumbouras would never utter this, he would never even think about it..
But here, in Greece, he didn't say anything outside the realm of the existential. Many people think that you are obliged to work somewhere good for experience without money. Just as many counter you with bad employers and because they pay you 700 euros, they don't accept that you are not available to them 24 hours a day and they will even bother you in the middle of the night to sit down to cover something at work.
Many consider it their right to treat you like garbage because they pay you peanuts and blackmail you with the classic «if you don't like it, leave, the kids from the schools are lining up to come to me for half the money». And because there is no collegial solidarity, because who would be willing to roll the dice for you, you end up bowing your head and finding solace in psychotropic drugs.
The country's labour market has not trained us to demand, but to tacitly accept intimidation, to bow our heads, to compromise.
We have a very different criterion than abroad as to what constitutes inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. The boundary is not distinct to us.
We did not find the Pumbura manifesto utopian or unrealistic. What is utopian is that there is no longer an abundance of employers who set a ceiling of EUR 500 for a five-day, eight-hour week, packaged with psychological abuse!
P.S. Even if your goal was not to talk about unpaid work, but perhaps, perhaps, in the hope of talking about volunteering for mutual aid organizations, you realize that you have completely screwed up and ten apologies are no longer enough!
By Stergios Pooleret
