Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Workers at Greece’s Hellenic Culture Organization plan a protest outside the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, at the foot of the 2,500-year-old Parthenon Temple, against plans to shut down the state-run agency.

Members of the organization’s union will hold the protest at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow to protest the sacking of 250 of their colleagues and its imminent abolition, according to an e-mailed statement from the association today.

“We’ve been told that after nine years of work, our contracts won’t be renewed on the 30th of the month,” said Christos Efstathiou, the president of the union, in a phone interview. “Our jobs will be replaced by entrants from the state-run central public sector hiring agency Asep or by transfers from other state-run organizations.”

Prime Minister George Papandreou’s deficit-cutting drive, in return for a 110 billion-euro ($139 billion) bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, includes a freeze on hiring in the state sector, amid wage and pension cuts. Officials have said there will be no firings of civil servants, with over-staffed agencies such as Hellenic Railways Organization SA seeing their staff transferred to other state jobs.

Efstathiou said the staff of the agency operated stores, cafeterias and canteens at archaeological sites and museums around the country and that protesters wouldn’t block access to the museum. Protests at sites such as the Acropolis, the country’s most famous monument, have been cited by officials as hurting tourism, the country’s biggest industry.

To contact the reporter on this story: Maria Petrakis in Athens at mpetrakis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Angela Cullen at acullen8@bloomberg.net