THE RAIN is pelting down in Athens, black clouds are gathered over the Acropolis and the city has reverberated to the sounds of sirens all day long. The strikes have started. On the radio, Billie Holiday is singing ‘Stormy Weather’: “Life is bare, gloom and misery everywhere… just can’t get my poor old self together.” It could become the new Greek national anthem.

The weekend saw the unions begin their stubborn resistance to the government’s austerity package. Pension reform and pay freezes mean that Papandreou’s administration has to convince the EU that Greece can weather the storms – and then he has to his rein in his own militant and union dominated work force. Even Hercules would struggle.

The most earthquake-ridden country in Europe is in danger of being the epicentre of civil unrest. Its aftershocks are likely to spread to the rest of the countries of the eurozone’s PIGS group (Portugal, Italy and Spain – and now possibly Ireland, too). Greece is a country with a history of successful mass protest, making successive governments relent on unpopular but necessary reform in return for support.

The unions have won in the past and they believe they can win again. Their stubborn spirit of solidarity and self-interest might have been able to withstand the tremors of privatisation with protectionism but this economic earthquake is ‘the big one’.

A general strike has been called tomorrow, with another one due on February 24. But with customs officials and revenue collectors already leading the action over the weekend, there will be few days from now on when the beleaguered economy will not face disruption from stoppages and walkouts.

It may, of course, result in exactly the opposite effect to what is intended: more job losses. In a nation known to have one of the most over-staffed and least productive public sectors in Europe, their determined opposition may be the final straw, but many workers feel they have no other way to vent their increasing fear and frustration.

So who will buy out Greece and save the PIGS bacon? If the EU cannot bail out the broke, then the brokers will come from much further afield than the Aegean.

As I sit with bankers at a British Chamber of Commerce dinner, they tell me that there is talk of China and India leading the bail out with bonds. If the Greeks default, and the EU is unable to manage its own affairs internally, it may well be the whole country becomes indebted to those much further away: globalisation on a grand scale.

I wonder how many of those proud union workers with their marching bands and waving their flags in Syntagma Square realise the true implications of their actions? Many will argue the threats are simply capitalist bullying that they’ve weathered the winds in the past and that the only way forward is to stand united. But strong words may not be enough; it remains to be seen if the little PIGS houses are made of straw or stone.