THOUSANDS of workers marched through Athens today during a 24-hour general strike called by Greek unions in protest against the rising cost of living.

In an action timed to coincide with the government submitting the 2025 budget to parliament, workers in both the public and private sectors joined the strike, which disrupted public transport and halted ferry service between the Greek islands and the mainland.

Medical staff at state-run hospitals and teachers were among those who joined the action, which also pressed a demand for the reinstatement of collective wage agreements that were scaled back during Greece’s financial crisis — which began in 2010.

Around 12,000 protesters marched through central Athens, while another 5,000 demonstrated in the northern city of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest .

“We want to showcase the rage and resentment of salaried employees for what is happening to their income,” said Yannis Panagopoulos, head of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece, the umbrella union representing private-sector employees.

“We have no way to be able to cope with the high cost of living other than with an increase to our income. But our incomes remain frozen in the bailout era,” he said.

Greece’s financial crisis wipe out a quarter of the economy. Successive international bailouts were conditional on implementation of deeply unpopular reforms including pension and wage cuts, which led to poverty and unemployment rates spiralling.

Greece has since returned to healthy growth and recently achieved investment-grade status again, but it still retains the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the European Union.

“Greece needs a pay rise,” European Trade Union Confederation general secretary Esther Lynch on Tuesday.

She said she was in Athens “to bring the solidarity greetings from 45 million workers and their trade unions from around Europe.”

The European confederation supports “all workers in Greece who are going to come out to demand that pay rise and to demand the genuinely binding collecting agreement to guarantee a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work,” Ms Lynch added.

Unions have criticised the right-wing government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for its housing policies and failure to tackle inflations, which have eroded workers’ living standards.

Journalists at Greek media outlets held their own 24-hour strike in support on Tuesday, pulling all news broadcasts off the air for the day so that they could cover today’s general strike.