New nightmare for 1,8 million workers

Private sector employees will soon come across clipped wages since their employers, with 1,8 million workers in Greece, will try to apply business contracts with lower incomes, devaluing the sectoral ones.

Their representatives however, defend the minister of Labor Ms Louka Katseli’s standpoint of giving way to the business contracts only in cases where an enterprise is threatened to shut down so as to avoid unfair competition and only with the consent of the sectoral organizations. According to sources, the minister will aim at including these conditions in the relevant legislation.

In which case, earnings will be clipped by 10 to 20%, but not below minimum wage, while the loss will be covered by OAED.

Contrariwise, SEB is all set for the Memorandum terms asking for generalized adjustment of the business contracts against the sectoral ones.

But how does this translate in the tourism sector for example? Today’s sectoral agreement for waiters is for gross wages at 930 Euro. If the business contracts prevail, then it will drop to 740, which is the national collective agreement wage.

According to sources, during the negotiations with the Troika the government has agreed to abolish the extension of the sectoral agreements to enterprises that were not represented. Sectoral organizations will be able to file demands in order for the sectoral wages to prevail.

Which means that there has to be a sectoral organization to file the demand in that certain enterprise, for the sectoral wage to be given.

However, during the negotiations under Giannis Koukiadis, the social partners, GSEE and SEB, have kicked against the extensions issue, whereas the golden mean seems to have been found on the arbitration subject, although SEB was reluctant to the last minute, preferring a joint referral to OMED by both workers and their employees.