By Soraia Ramos
The Athens Labor Unions Organization (EKA) works on more topics than labor. “Every emigrant lives in a system. They have children, and a life. So we try to serve other needs too”, admits Vania Nedelteheva. The Union Representative says that they do a lot of networking with other organizations, in order to cooperate in different network fields. Labor, Health, legal, emigration are their main issues, concerning the city of Athens area and the region.
On emigration topic they work in a national level.‘Everything we do is free of charge’ to ‘everyone in this country. Not only Greek people’. Meetings, workshops, training courses about legislation and answering questions to media and their audience are their daily tasks. In addition, they provide help through telephone with two hotlines and presential consulting meetings.
Vania Nedelteheva considers that ‘Greece has a very good labor law, but it is different to deal with it in practice, because a lot of emigrants work in small business or families so it is very difficult to find out what is going on with them, if they don’t find us’.
The institution with more than a century of history, financed by memberships and public funds, receives two thousand cases related with emigrants per year. 80% of the emigration cases that the Union supported had ended successfully. However, Vania Nedelteheva recognizes that nowadays ‘there is still a lot of discrimination at the working places and a lot of work to do in this field, in Greece’.
