Greek electricity workers threaten strike over reforms

Workers at Greece's biggest power producer PPC threatened on Sunday to call a wave of strikes in opposition to plans to loosen the company's grip over the country's coal reserves, Greece's most abundant and cheapest source of energy.
Greece's international lenders are pushing Athens to lift state-controlled PPC's de facto monopoly on the production of lignite, a form of soft, brown coal that forms the backbone of electricity production in Greece.
Under a European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout plan, debt-laden Greece needs to open up 40 percent of the lignite market to private energy firms.