GREEK municipal workers staged a national strike on Tuesday over health and safety concerns.

The stoppage was sparked by the death of an as yet unnamed worker who was killed in the municipality of Xylokastro while working on a garbage truck on January 8.

The worker was killed while collecting waste when a car collided with the collection truck and hit the woman who at the time was on the lift to empty the garbage.

The driver of the car was arrested.

Major demonstrations were held across Greece including in Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras under the main slogan of “Stop the employers’ crimes” and “protection measures here and now.”

In Athens, the Attica Local Authorities Workers’ Union occupied the offices of the Independent Labour Inspection Authority, where they put up a giant banner on the front of the building. 

The banner read: “64 workers dead, thousands crippled, governments and mayors send us to our death, the Labour Inspection absent. All on strike.” 

Strikers and their supporters then marched to the parliament.

Marchers chanted slogans such as “with a galley regime for workers, the employers’ profits increase” and “unpaid work and sweatshops everywhere, this is the rot of capitalism.”

Speaking at the strike rally, Pame union member Kostantas said: “The government and mayors see the health and safety of workers as a ‘cost’.” 

He said that there should be no more fatal labour “accidents” to add to the 64 that have occurred since 2014.

There have been dozens of deaths at work in recent years in municipalities across Greece which, according to activists, has raised questions about the role and responsibilities of mayors and governments to make workplaces safer.

In 2017, in Pyrgos in the west of Greece, a woman garbage collector was killed after falling off the small platform used by bin collectors on the back of the truck.