Tuesday 13 November 2018 16:00 – 17:00 A. Payatakes Seminar Room
“The shipbuilding industry of Perama: labour and social labour reproduction”
Eleni Kyramargiou, PhD Institute for Mediterranean Studies (IMS)
Abstract
At the end of the 1960’s, the Piraeus Port Authority (PPA) transformed part of the coastal area of Perama in the Free Shipbuilding Zone. The establishment of this special shipyard which took on contract work in shipbuilding and maintenance by work sector, thus offering flexible but highlycompensated employment, led to the development of a whole network of professional relationships and activities which affected the evolution of the city of Perama on both the economic and the social level. The development of a mid-sized shipbuilding industry resulted in not only an increase in the businesses operating on the site, with foremen becoming business owners overnight, but also in employed personnel. More and more craftsmen, both qualified and unqualified, entered the workforce of the Zone. In 2008, the global shipping industry went through a period of great crisis which definitively affected the Greek shipping industry. This crisis was combined with the political and financial issues faced by the Skaramanga Shipyard; problems which remain unresolved until today, rendering the largest shipyard in the country inactive. In a short period of time, in effect all work in the Zone was interrupted, many businesses closed down permanently or temporarily, and thousands of workers were made redundant. In this context, the present talk will discuss issues related to labour in the shipbuilding industry. More specifically, we are going to discuss the subject of expertise in the different work sectors of the Zone, either through apprentice schools or through work itself, with the aim to highlight the process of social labour reproduction in the Zone during the last 50 years.