With just over a week to go before the opening ceremony, the Athens Olympics are again in crisis. Paramedics on Tuesday staged a 24-hour strike demanding they be paid the same bonus promised to members of the security forces who will be patrolling the immense event. Yesterday the majority of the 11,000 hotel workers in Athens went on a one-day strike in support of a demand that their pay be doubled during the Games.

The paramedics clearly have a grievance. The Greek organizers withdrew promised bonuses to a range of workers in panic at the soaring cost of the Games. After optimistically low figures when Athens originally pitched for the event, the cost was finally put at $5.55 billion. This has now soared to over $7 billion and some analysts suspect the overspend will prove to have been even greater because of the security bill. Given that the paramedics will play as essential a role as the security personnel, it seems right that the original payment promise to them should be honored.

That said, their threat to withdraw their services from the Games is utterly unacceptable. Their function is to care for the sick and injured and transport them as quickly as possible to hospitals for treatment. Their job transcends most normal work because they are the only qualified people to whom society can turn in an emergency. For them to withdraw their service at any time is as wrong as it would be for doctors and nurses to go on strike. The correct way to have handled this dispute is through public opinion and legislators. If that failed to move the organizers, then the paramedics’ union could have gone to the courts and made a civil claim for the promised compensation. The threatened disruption of medical services for the Games is simply a dereliction of duty which, win or lose, will besmirch the image of the Athens ambulance men.

Athens hotel workers were made no promises of bonuses. They argue however that since hoteliers have substantially increased their room rates — in one reported case by nearly eight times — it is only fair that the work-ers should also enjoy a bonus. It thus seems perfectly reasonable that market forces should also be applied to the skilled labor needed to run the hotels. What is remarkable is that the majority of Greek hoteliers have not already cut deals with their workers to give them a share of the increased revenue. That this strike should occur on so near the Games is extraordinary. It does however seem to point to a deeper malaise. We should not forget the strikes by construction workers demanding big money to finish already badly overdue projects. These have been mirrored by demands from contractors for extra payments.

In short the Athens Olympics appear to have turned into a massive payola for most of those involved. Greek pride, so boosted by its team’s emergence last month as European football champions, may have brought about the long-overdue completion of all the facilities. It could now however be on the verge of turning to shame. The motto of the Athens Olympics is “In the true spirit of the games.” That spirit could itself perhaps be better summed up by another motto: “Gimme! Gimme!”