WHEN THE AKEL chief sanctimoniously announces that his party would never allow the working people to be burdened with the cost of the economic recession, it was not clear which working people is he actually referring to? Who are the working people of Cyprus that could all be lumped together into a single, homogeneous grouping so their interests and rights could be protected by AKEL and President Christofias?
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that all wage-earners are working people, we would be putting a chief executive of a bank in the same category as a road-sweeper, who earns one hundredth of what the former earns; a managing partner in a big auditing firm would be in the same social grouping as a construction site worker as they are both working people. The truth is that in this day and age, 99 per cent of the adult population would be classed as working people, as they have to work to earn a living. Only the remaining one per cent if that much – is fortunate enough not to have to work, living off rents, dividends and bank interest.
In short, the use of the term, even for AKEL and governments propaganda purposes is totally misleading, calculated to muddy the waters and deflect attention away from the reality. The reality is that the government has not done a very good job in protecting the low-earners among the working people who were employed in the private sector. There is currently more than 30,000 unemployed all of whom worked in the private sector; others have agreed to pay cuts or part-time employment in order to keep their jobs. Not much protection, whichever way we look at it.
In fairness, it is not the governments fault that working people were made redundant or forced to take pay-cuts. We are going through the worst-ever recession and businesses have been forced to downsize in order to stay afloat, while the less fortunate have been forced to close down. Some 30,000 people have already been shouldering the unpleasant consequences of the recession. AKEL and the government are only entitled to brag about protecting the rights – privileges to be more precise – of the working people in the public sector.
The distinction is never made because it would not sound very heroic to say that the government has defended the privileges of the pampered public sector workers. Not a single one lost his job and all have received big pay rises throughout the recession. In fact this group of working people would never know that we have been in a recession for the last two years, thanks to the governments commitment to defending the privileges that other private sector workers could only dream of. We would have expected a government with communist values to have defended the most vulnerable working people instead of the most provocatively privileged, if only to back up the presidents rhetoric about a fairer society.
The two big union federations, SEK, and AKEL-controlled PEO, have been helping the government propagate the hideous myth about protecting the working people by joining forces with public servants union PASYDY. Their representatives have been participating in negotiations about the public sector pay-roll and pensions with the government even though the issue does not affect their members. SEK and PEO bosses are, in effect, betraying their low-earning members in helping PASYDY defend the privileges of the labour aristocracy free healthcare, extremely high pensions and retirement bonuses towards which they make no contributions, shorter working hours etc.
They just cannot understand that by defending PASYDY privilege they are pushing the state closer to bankruptcy. Have they not noticed what has happened in Greece? The public sectors excesses eventually sank the economy. The result was that collective agreements were scrapped by the majority of employers, big pay cuts were imposed, workers were forced into part-time work and unemployment has rocketed. This is what would happen to non-privileged workers in Cyprus if our weak-willed president fails to persuade PASYDY to give up some of its members privileges; he is doing a very poor job of it. The fact that SEK and PEO are backing the public servants will make it even more difficult for the president to push for concessions. This is why it is an imperative for them to distance themselves from PASYDY and shatter the AKEL myths that defends privilege. The unions are not protecting the interest of their members by helping the labour aristocracy of the public sector maintain their privileges.
