Seasonal firefighters are taking their demands to the steps of Maximos Mansion today, Monday, August 31, staging a protest rally at 11:00 AM. Just hours before the demonstration, Vangelis Haramis, the Attica regional representative of the Panhellenic Union of Contract Firefighters, spoke to parapolitika.gr and outlined the core demands of contract firefighters: 12-month employment and full equalization with their permanent colleagues.
Read: Seasonal firefighters: Decision signed for additional overtime, night shift, and holiday pay
They are also demanding formal recognition of their extensive field experience, with Haramis arguing that recent tragic events have clearly shown that the Fire Service’s frontline personnel are simply not sufficient.
Seasonal firefighters: “We demand what should be self-evident”
“On Monday, August 31, we contract firefighters are demanding what should be obvious: 12-month employment and full equalization with our permanent colleagues,” Haramis told parapolitika.gr.
As he emphasized, “the recent tragic events have proven to our minister and to our leadership that the Fire Service’s frontline personnel are inadequate.” “We are essentially asking for our long-standing field experience to be recognized by integrating us into the permanent force of the Service,” he added.
The protest rally at 11:00 AM
The Panhellenic Union of Contract Firefighters has called on all seasonal firefighters to show up outside Maximos Mansion at 11:00 AM in a show of solidarity.
Under the banner “No more broken promises,” the contract firefighters are pushing to bring their demands directly to the government, putting their employment future and years of frontline experience back in the spotlight. Today’s mobilization is the latest in a series of actions they have taken over recent months to challenge their employment status and push for permanent integration into the Fire Service.
The thorny issue of age limits
Underlying today’s protest is also the issue of age restrictions in recent Fire Service recruitment announcements. A recent call for 600 General Duties Firefighters on fixed-term contracts required applicants to be no older than 30 as of December 31 of the announcement year — meaning only those born on or after January 1, 1996 were eligible to apply.
This age cap drew sharp criticism. As Thanos Psaropoulos, president of the Panhellenic Federation of Private Law Fire Service Employees, previously told parapolitika.gr, the restriction automatically excluded approximately 1,900 seasonal firefighters with years of operational experience. “It’s contradictory that we can work as seasonal firefighters but can’t become permanent ones,” he pointedly noted, stressing that people who serve on the front lines every summer are being shut out of the process solely because of their age.
