LEFT AND right-wing unions SEK and PEO joined forces yesterday to highlight the “unacceptable” conditions under which construction workers are hired, particularly for public projects, resulting in high unemployment among Cypriot workers.
Undeclared unemployment, “humiliatingly” low wages and failure to pay social insurance to mainly EU workers are causing unemployment to remain high among Cypriot construction workers, they argued.
PEO union boss in charge of construction workers, Michalis Papanicolaou said the situation on construction sites was “unacceptable”.
He argued a significant section of contractors were violating collective agreements and labour laws. He gave them a month to sort it out before promising to name guilty contractors.
“It is a fact that the construction sector has recently seen a 30 per cent drop in activity. Despite this, the number of construction workers continues to be around 40,000, similar to the period of maximum growth, with the difference being today, we have over 4,000 unemployed, the majority of whom are Cypriot,” said Papanicolaou.
The union boss pointed out that of the 40,000 workers, around half were Cypriot, while the remainder were from the EU, mostly Bulgaria and Romania. From the 4,000 unemployed, around 80 per cent were Cypriot.
Asked to explain the discrepancy between employment in the industry and the near one third drop in business, Papanicolaou said a portion of contractors have stopped employing workers based on the terms of existing collective agreements, and now either themselves or through subcontractors, employ a large number of migrants who are paid “humiliating wages and benefits”.
So for every Cypriot who lost his job, contractors can afford to replace them with two EU workers, he said, adding that as a result, there are people who’ve been unemployed for a year or more.
Papanicolaou and SEK head for construction workers Yiannakis Ioannou explained that contractors simply call up agents who offer them an endless supply of migrant workers who are paid only €150 or €250 a week, and are made to work unlimited hours without being registered for social insurance or enjoying any benefits. They estimate that undeclared workers account for 65 per cent of employees in the construction industry.
“Our migrant colleagues are not to blame for the problems mentioned, they are also victims of a section of contractors,” said Papanicolaou. “We call all Cypriot and migrant workers in a common struggle to face these problems,” he added.
The two union bosses warned that they would reveal who the guilty parties are, particularly those engaged in public projects, since a cabinet decision last year obliges them to adopt collective agreement terms for any public works projects.
The two estimated that around 40 per cent of all construction work involved public projects.
Ioannou highlighted that the government decided to bring forward public projects in an effort to kick-start the slowing economy and reduce unemployment. This has not worked for the reasons stated above, he said.
The unionists would not rule out strike measures if the situation did not improve soon and contractors violating labour laws were not held to account.
