By Martin Hellicar
FINANCE Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou was yesterday hard at work mending bridges with civil servants’ union Pasydy.
Christodoulou has been in the powerful union’s bad books for agreeing to negotiate state doctors’ demands with their break-away union Pasyki. Pasyki staged two warning strikes late last month and was threatening an indefinite strike if the minister did not recognise them.
But Pasydy believes it should still represent the doctors, even though 98 per cent of government doctors jumped ship five months ago to form Pasyki. Christodoulou initially backed the Pasydy position, but the threat of major disruption to hospitals made him change his mind.
The minister yesterday called the Pasydy leadership to a face-to-face meeting.
In statements afterwards, Christodoulou insisted the doctors’ issue had not been on the agenda but bent over backwards to please Pasydy. “The organisation for public servants is Pasydy, and I cannot hide the fact that for us (the government) as employers it always was and remains our desire to have a monolithic and powerful union movement.”
Pasydy was obviously pleased by the minister’s approach, its terse attacks of last week – when the union accused the minister of trying to undermine unions – apparently forgotten.
“During this meeting, we received totally satisfactory answers to important questions that arose after recent developments and which concerned the way the government negotiates with Pasydy,” Pasydy general secretary Glafcos Hadjipetrou said, in obvious reference to the doctors’ issue.
He too denied the doctors’ issue had been discussed.
He did not say whether Pasydy would now be accepting Christodoulou’s invitation to negotiate doctors’ demands jointly with Pasyki.
Pasydy last week threatened to boycott the talks with the government, upset at Christodoulou’s decision to talk to Pasyki. Christodoulou responded that the government would go ahead and negotiate with Pasyki alone.
Pasydy claim still to represent all state doctors, as those who have joined Pasyki have not officially left Pasydy. Pasyki say their members are only still registered with Pasydy to enable their new union to seek Pasydy assets in court.
Government doctors have long been calling for pay rises, bigger pensions and more overtime pay, complaining they get a raw deal compared to other civil servants because their long years in training mean they enter the service much later. They abandoned Pasydy saying it was not doing enough to push their demands.
The doctors also want a radical reorganisation of the way the health service is run.
