THE MAIN government workers union PASYDY yesterday rejected the suggestion that decisions on the measures necessary to shore up the economy must be made by Friday, as employee representatives asked for the dialogue with the government and parties to continue.
Among other measures, the government wants to freeze the state payroll for two years in bid to avoid a bailout and EU sanctions for violating fiscal rules.
But PASYDY boss Glafcos Hadjipetrou the state payroll was not the problem.
“These are fairytales and an opportunity to mislead the public opinion and scrap certain rights workers have because they are supposedly privileges,” Hadjipetrou told reporters after a meeting with main opposition chief Nicos Anastassiades, whose DISY party backed the measures.
The IMF said on Tuesday that Cyprus had to contain public sector wages, currently at 15.4 per cent of GDP – the highest public wage bill in the eurozone.
Hadjipetrou said the problem was not the public sector but the island’s banks, which are heavily exposed to Greece and looked like they “would be led to the support mechanism.”
“It looks like this is unavoidable,” Hadjipetrou said.
SEK chief Nicos Moiseos warned against any proposals in the form of “take it or leave it.”
“I think it would be a big mistake to reach this deadlock,” Moiseos said.
He said there was no time to discuss the matter with Finance Minister Kikis Kazamias who is in Brussels and would be returning on Thursday evening.
But Kazamias later said he would try to meet the unions ahead of the Friday morning meeting.
Moiseos said unions would not be able to convince their members if parties agree and impose their decision without prior consultation.
“What we want and demand is to negotiate what concerns collective agreements,” the SEK leader said.
His PEO counterpart said the measures were not balanced and socially fair and “our effort is to make corrections.”
“The total freeze on salaries is not fair for everyone because some who have reached the highest level of their scales will not be affected” compared with those on lower scales.
Both Kazamias and Anastassiades said that decisions must be made on Friday.
“Time is limited to December 13 so you realise that conditions are such where not only we will have sanctions imposed on us … but at the same time the situation will worsen even more,” Anastassiades said.
He rejected union claims that wealth has not contributed its share, saying if it were only the workers who contributed, state revenues would have been significantly less.
“Companies pay their taxes, they have been saddled with a host of other tax burdens and will be burdened further,” Anastassiades said.
