“I will fight for my rights and for justice.” The words of battling shopkeeper, Eleni Kondiadou, who led a group of angry merchants to force an end to the ‘plastic’ money strike that was crippling their Christmas sales.
But Kondiadou, looking back on the day when she and her friends “knocked heads together” at banking trade union headquarters in Nicosia, insists that she has never done anything like it before.
The group of shopkeepers led by Kondiadou unexpectedly dropped in at the headquarters of the bank employees’ trade union ETYK on Monday and forced employers and union leaders to hammer out a deal so people could get back to shopping and they could get on with business. Their demands were met and a solution was found within two hours. JCC employees returned to work yesterday while banks allowed plastic card transactions again.
The sequence of events that sparked off the astonishing protest began three weeks ago when ETYK called a strike at JCC Payment Systems over the re-hiring of an information technology specialist. The dispute caused huge business and shopping problems, eventually halting all credit and debit card transactions at midnight on Friday and creating a backlog of unprocessed transactions reaching £40 million. Consumers were panicking, the economy was suffering and shopkeepers were feeling the brunt.
The impulsive decision of shopkeepers to take matters into their own hands was the underlying factor that ended the strike and put the economy back on its feet. Headed by Kondiadou, the team of protesters refused to leave the building until union leader, Loizos Hadjicostis and JCC head, Evdokimos Xenofondos shook on a deal to end the strike which Labour Minister Andreas Moushiouttas heard and approved on the other end of a mobile phone.
The decision to take action had come a day earlier when Kondiadou decided she had had enough. The multi-store she owns and runs in Nicosia, Caterways, was feeling the pinch of the bank card freeze.
“I was very tired and found it unjust what was happening. I had to fight for my rights,” she said. “We had started preparations for Christmas from September. A whole team of us made plans, orders, decorations, Christmas programmes, organised marketing, trained staff, the lot. This is the most important time of the year for businesses.”
Kondiadou, a mother of two, said she gave up precious time with her children to arrange everything. “When we stayed open last weekend and realised the effect of the strike on the market, I knew I had to do something,” she said.
The following Sunday, Kondiadou decided to make calls to concerned shopkeepers, tourism agents, and ordinary consumers to take action. The next morning at 10am, a group of 50-odd merchants were at the doors of the union headquarters, startling their leader who was forced to make an impromptu conference.
“Luckily, I had the support of everyone. It was a team effort and nobody had any doubts. Everybody was affected. I don’t think the parties involved realised how serious the problem was or that people were experiencing a real crisis which was going to get worse.”
The defiant store owner, despite taking such action for the first time, insists that she will always fight for her rights and for justice. “When people don’t fight for their rights or react to injustice, they don’t give the message to those that run the place that everything’s not OK,” said Kondiadou.
She compared it to running a shop. “I made this shop and thought it was OK but when I heard other peoples’ opinions, I changed it. The feedback from my clients helped. You need that in society too.”
Asked if she had feared her unplanned actions might fail, she replied sternly, “I was not going to leave until something was done. And those involved also understood that the problem had to be solved.” Kondiadou maintains that the successful mobilisation of shopkeepers was totally spontaneous. “There were no union members, party officials or representatives. Just us, not one or two of us, but all of us together sitting in that conference room.”
Regarding her success, the end of the strike and the resumption of bank card transactions, the rookie negotiator smiles as people start shopping again. “People are breathing again and you can actually feel the Christmas spirit now. People are less worried about their money and can use their cards which have been widely distributed lately. the pulse of Christmas is back.”
When someone takes such decisive and dynamic action to resolve a confrontation was having untold consequences, the question begs. a life in politics? She chuckles before responding, “No to politics, I just want my job to go well.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
