23% decrease in salaries within a quarter!

Dramatic evidence recorded by labour inspectors for February-May 2012. The decrease in salaries is as high as 30%, mainly through individual contracts that have flooded the labor market. The largest decreases were recorded on the islands, while illegal employment rose to 36% from 29% last year.

Specifically, during the period between February 14th and May 15th, over 78000 people saw their salaries reduced. 64.201 individual contracts were signed, 16388 companies reduced salaries by 22.9%. Cuts in earnings with individual contracts range from 17% to 30%.

13829 business contracts with pay cuts of 21.35% on average were signed. In fact on the islands, reductions range between 35% to 40%.

Meanwhile, during the first quarter of the year 28796 full-time employment contracts were turned into other forms of flexible contracts. It is characteristic that there is an increase of 43.6% compared to last year.

An increase of 47.24% was recorded in the number of employment contracts which were turned from full to part time employment.  The increase percentage is at 6.67% for job rotation in agreement with workers and jumped to 169.39% for job rotation by the employer’s unilateral decision.

At the same time, a sharp decline is followed by new contracts, which dropped by 10.98% compared to last year. Specifically, during the first quarter, there was a 12.77% reduction of full time contracts, while a 2.72% and 4.88% reduction is noted in part and full time job rotation respectively.

Regarding the percentage of uninsured workers, based on the SEPE checks, is up to 36%. There is a sharp increase of illegal employment since that percentage was at 28.9% last year.