“Article 37 necessary to get the 6th tranche”

An extension of the suspension of sectoral agreements until the end of the implementation of the medium term program was announced by Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, speaking to the Parliamentary Finance Committee.

Note that initially, and in accordance with Article 37 of the bill, the “freezing” of sectoral agreements was set at two years, and has now been extended to 2014.

The Finance Minister made it clear that Article 37 is a Troika “imperative” and its enactment a necessary condition for the release of the sixth installment, but it should be noted that it states that the operational contract “may not contain less favorable working conditions for workers operating under the terms of national collective agreements”.

In addition, Mr. Venizelos informed committee members that its inclusion brings about  a reduction of 35% in salaries of public utility employees.

Furthermore, paragraph 5 of article 31 reads: “The average per capita cost of any salaries, allowances or remunerations and payments of any kind for staff cannot exceed 65% of the average per capita costs of the respective firm, organization or company, as it stood on 31.12.2009”, while according to paragraph 4 of the article: “wages are not to exceed 1900 euros”.

Changes are also inclusive of the addition that clarifies the role of business contracts and the redressing of injustice between those serving and those recruited in the scale-based payroll.

Finally, Mr. Venizelos left open the possibility that additional changes will also follow, while he stated that he will make two extra amendments which will allow the public sector to hold an international bid for granting authorization for state lotteries, which will in turn clear the way for solidarity levy collection.

Earlier on, the Labour Minister, Mr. Koutroumanis proceeded with the reassurance that the National Collective Agreement will not be abolished though, as he said, “There are some people that want to ban everything in order to regulate the market”.

The major issue for the government is that it must now cope with the frequent reactions within the PASOK Parliamentary team over Article 37, while Mrs Louka Katseli has already made it clear that she will not be voting for the article.

Andreas Makripidis, Leonidas Grigorakos, Kostas Kartalis, Katerina Batzeli, Mimis Androulakis and Vasso Papandreou have also openly opposed the article.