Greek Truck Drivers Vote To Continue Strike

ATHENS -(Dow Jones)- Greek truck drivers decided Friday to continue a crippling, five-day strike that has led to widespread fuel shortages and further dented the country's image in the midst of the Greece's all-important summer tourist season.

"We will continue [the strike]. We will continue and we will move ahead," Giorgos Tzortzatos, head of the Greek truckers' federation, told journalists after a union meeting.

The decision to continue with the strike comes in open defiance of a Greek government decision ordering the striking truckers back to work, and after marathon talks between the government and the truck drivers on Thursday.

The strike has led to severe fuel shortages around the country and massive lines at gas stations. Local media reports that more than 95% of gas stations in the greater Athens area are out of fuel, and the majority of them in the northern city of Thessaloniki has also run dry.

On some of Greece's islands and in its remote rural areas, the shortages of fuel and some goods are even more acute, while the disruption has come as a further blow to Greece's struggling tourist industry, already hit by cancellations following violent protests in May.

Wednesday, the Greek government issued a civil mobilization order to legally compel drivers of trucks--especially those transporting fuel and perishable goods--to resume work in hopes of ending the open-ended strike. But bureaucratic delays and mass disobedience by owners and drivers mean that the civil order has had little effect.

-By Alkman Granitsas and Nick Skrekas, Dow Jones Newswires; +30 210 331 2881; alkman.granitsas@dowjones.com

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