AS MORE information is made public about the pay and privileges enjoyed by workers at Cyprus’ semi-governmental organisations it becomes clear that one of the biggest achievements of the Republic in its 50-year existence has been to create a society of haves and have-nots.
Among the haves are civil servants, semi-governmental workers, teachers and all the employees of independent state agencies, who enjoy a comfortable, totally secure and generously rewarded professional life from the day they start work; in some cases the benefits continue after death. After a retired civil servant dies, his full state pension, towards which he had made no contribution, continues to be paid to his wife until her death.
Among the have-nots is everyone else – people who work in the private sector, without job security and with much lower pay, longer hours, fewer holidays, a higher retirement age and monthly state pensions that are one third of the amount paid to the privileged classes. Yet these are the people who create the wealth that pays for the privileged professional lives of the haves, who are like members of a Soviet-style nomenclature. Is it any wonder that the only ambition Cypriot teenagers seem to have is one day to become a civil servant or a state school teacher? Everyone dreams of joining the state nomenclature.
The phenomenon of the two classes into which our society is divided has been brought to the surface by the recession, which has amplified the disparities and led to unprecedented rates of unemployment. While thousands of workers in the private sector have lost their jobs and tens of thousands are living with the fear of being laid off, public sector employees are fighting to maintain their privileges.
Talk of small sacrifices that would help halt the widening of the budget deficit has prompted strike threats by the unions of the nomenclature. But even if the government went ahead with its proposal to reduce civil servants’ pensions, for instance, these would be twice, instead of three times as high, as those paid to the members of the underprivileged classes.
On Thursday, during a House plenum debate about the budgets of big semi-governmental organisations, several deputies were outraged that the average annual cost for a full-time employee at the CyBC is €72,000. This is significantly higher than the Electricity Authority of Cyprus, at which the average employee cost is €48,000 per year and Cyta (€55,000). And to add insult to injury, the CyBC, which is financed almost exclusively by the taxpayer, had submitted an increased budget for approval, wanting to create even more highly-paid jobs in the middle of a recession.
At least Cyta and EAC are self-financing, but not for much longer, as their respective surpluses have been declining while staff costs keep rising. These are badly-managed and inefficient organisations that exist primarily to serve their employees’ interests. Cyta, for instance, has the most absurd early retirement scheme that allows managers to leave at 55, but still pays them 85 per cent of all the salaries they would have received until reaching retirement age at 60, in addition to a golden handshake. Where else in the world would an employee be paid five years’ salaries in one go in order not to work? Only Cyprus’ privileged workers’ co-operatives have such intelligent retirement schemes.
EAC, which is a monopoly, ensures its workers are given an array of ridiculous bonuses – for driving a car – but is now passing these costs onto to underprivileged workers by increasing the electricity rates. Its unions, which persuaded the legislature to pass a law banning competition in the electricity market, would not hear of a wage freeze. EAC workers’ privileges are protected by making their underprivileged fellow workers pay extortionate electricity rates, which also contribute to everything being so expensive in Cyprus.
A few deputies may have made fuss about these organisations of privileged workers, but the truth is that the politicians have created this provocative inequality between the private and public sector workers. These organisations are run by the political parties – through their placemen on the boards – which are responsible for creating a class of overpaid, underworked and pampered workers.
These workers of the nomenclature are obscenely defending their privileges in the midst of a recession while the queues of unemployed have-nots grow longer by the day. The recession has widened the gulf that separates the haves and have-nots even though the social consequences of the growing inequality have not been felt yet.
