By Martin Hellicar
PRESIDENT Clerides yesterday said the government was pushing forward with a tightening up of the law governing strikes in “vital” sectors.
“The government aims at the more correct regulation of the right to strike where it concerns vital services. That is services whose interruption threatens the life and health of the public or public security,” Clerides said.
Addressing the annual general meeting (AGM) of the Employers and Industrialists Federation (Oev) in Nicosia yesterday, Clerides said his government would be seeking to review strike law “in a way that maximises the possibility of peaceful resolution of (employer-employee) differences.”
“I stress that the government has no intention of abolishing the right to strike,” he stated. But, he said, the existing law was antiquated and “clashes with generally accepted democratic principles.”
The president also called on social partners to show “restraint” when re- negotiating the collective agreements of about 100,000 workers this year. Clerides said keeping labour costs down was crucial to the health of the economy.
“I hope that unnecessary confrontations will be kept at bay and the collective agreements will be renewed peacefully in order to avoid further corrosion of the competitiveness of our economy,” the President said.
He said the economy had performed satisfactorily last year and prospects were good for 1998, provided labour costs could be kept down and public deficits reduced.
Economic growth reached 2.5 per cent in 1997 and was expected to reach 4.5 per cent in 1998, he told delegates. Unemployment would be reduced to 3 per cent and inflation brought down from 3.6 per cent last year to 3 per cent, always provided costs were controlled, Clerides stated.
Collective agreements in over 200 sectors come up for renewal this year.
The government would be doing its part to help keep the economy competitive by introducing a series of modernisation measures, Clerides said. Among these measures was a restructuring of the civil service to improve productivity and curb recruitment rates, the AGM heard.
In his speech, Oev chairman Andreas Pittas called for “brave” action from the government to curb the powers of striking workers. He said industry needed state support to reverse the downward trends he said were evident in many sectors of the economy.
