“We consider this project as our child…Perhaps the happiest moment over the years is the moment we handed it over…We are leaving a piece of our lives behind.” With these words, the President of the Thessaloniki Metro Employees Union, Thomas Michalopouloss, he describes his feelings about the operation of the metro from November 30, 2024, but also about the great chapter that is closing for him.

August 1, 2007: It was the day that Mr. Michalopoulos started working on the construction sites of the subway, which he continued until the last day before its operation. “My first day at the subway as a worker is still in my memory. I come from the countryside and working in the center of Thessaloniki was my dream for that and I remember exactly what I did. At that time we were trying to move cables to do some work, we were working next to the shops, the sheets hadn’t been put in yet”, recounts Mr. Thomas Michalopoulos speaking to Thestival.gr “I started working in the metro when I was 34 years old and I’m leaving at 51”, he adds.

For 17 consecutive years, Mr. Michalopoulos worked in the construction of the Thessaloniki metro and, as he says, worked in various positions, either on construction sites, as a warehouse assistant, or as a driver. “Each one of them had its own beauty”, he admits and confesses that “for sure in the many years, which are a lifetime, there have been many good and bad moments”.

The fraternal relationships, the piggy banks and also the stories from… a Greek movie

“There have been many good times over the years,” confesses Mr. Thomas Michalopoulos. “Certainly the most important thing is that after so many years we workers have developed fraternal relationships, even piggy banks,” he says, saying that several workers from different regions and even countries have been in the project for many years and even spend 24 hours together. “We ate at the same table, many times and from the same plate, during the difficult years. We were together more than with our families” he recalls and notes that even when they were going home, the subway was a subject of discussion.

“That’s why we consider the metro our child, we will miss it because we are leaving a part of our lives behind,” he emphasizes.

In fact, he also describes some stories “taken from old Greek movies”, after subway workers married employees of the shops around the construction sites.

He also ranks the moments when the construction of the subway was starting again as positive. “A very good time was in 2016, when the project started again. Of course, it was accompanied by a bad development for us, the reduction of our salaries by 40%, but we put our backs together and succeeded”, he describes.

Afterwards, he makes reference to the finding of antiquities. “They marked us because finding your story where you work, in the soil, is something exciting. We were watching history unfold in front of us,” he says.

Speaking about the positives, he refers to the establishment of the Union in 2012 which “contributed to the demands of the workers but also a safer project for them” while emphasizing that “ultimately the most pleasant moment was to deliver the project” since as he says “we show the our job”.

Thessaloniki metro

The work accidents and the times when the work stopped

“Unfortunately there were also bad times,” says Mr. Michalopoulos and stands for the workers who were lost during the construction and also during the periods when the project was stopped.

“We lost five colleagues, three in work-related accidents and two from pathological causes during work hours,” he says, standing at the first work-related accident that occurred in February 2009, when a worker had lost his life after being crushed by a crane arm during the process of its disassembly. “Vladimiros and I were together every day. He passed by and greeted us, and after five minutes we learned that he had been killed. We couldn’t believe it,” he says.

He still talks about the moments when the project stopped and the moments of anxiety experienced by the workers. “In 2011 there was intense concern among the workers, we were talking about where we would find work”, he describes, while for 2015 he says that “there was the scenario of the consortium withdrawing from the project. There we believed that the work would stop, we were afraid. In the end, such a thing did not happen and the project was finally delivered.”

The period 2012-13, when the project was not progressing, cannot be erased from his memory. Then he even bent several times: “Elderly people asked us if they would catch the metro”, he remembers. “It was one of the most difficult moments”, he says and admits that: “I was trying to change the conversation, we couldn’t tell them that the project stopped”.

The difficult parting

On November 29, Mr. Michalopoulos and many of his colleagues were last seen as subway workers. “I couldn’t leave, I turned almost all the stations”, he confesses to Thestival and adds that “parting with colleagues on the last day was very difficult because we knew that we would lose daily contact although we will obviously keep in touch because we have brotherly relations” .

Concluding his narrative, he asks that the request of the workers to place a plaque in one of the stations as a tribute to their colleagues who were lost during the work be granted, while he wonders why they were not invited to the opening. “It’s like our offering is not being recognized,” says Mr. Michalopoulos.