‘VICTORY for the workers’, read the front page, banner headline of Wednesday’s edition of AKEL mouthpiece Haravghi, with regard to the deal struck between the Employers and Industrialists’ Federation (OEV) and the two main unions PEO and SEK. The headline was accurate as OEV’s misguided initiative to help ailing businesses completely backfired, making things more difficult than they were before this unnecessary deal was reached.
OEV’s original demands included a freeze of wages and CoLA for two years, reducing overtime by bringing back the 40-hour week, suspension of employer contributions to provident funds. In the deal brokered on Tuesday by the unashamedly biased, Labour Minister Sotiroulla Charalambous, a former union official, who mediated, OEV secured one of its demands – the possibility of zero pay rises for 2012 and 2013. CoLA would still be paid by all companies, while businesses ‘not facing particular financial problems’ annual pay rises would be given, in line with the collective agreements.
Thanks to this idiotic deal agreed to by OEV, hoteliers will have to give pay rises, because 2011 was a good year for tourism and the union bosses decreed that hotels faced no financial problems, as if they could predict the bookings for this year. It does not matter that for the previous four years there was a decline in bookings and heavy losses for hotels. We do not know which other sectors of the economy would have to give pay rises according to union bosses.
It gets worse. OEV also agreed to the establishment of a committee with the mandate to ensure that the provisions of this deal were implemented, so “abuses would be prevented”. This committee would also have a say over whether a company would be able to make staff redundant as it would advise businesses on how to “avoid or restrict to the minimum possible lay-offs.” The committee would also make suggestions of measures that a business could take, “in the exceptional cases that it faces serious financial problems.”
OEV has in effect agreed to union representatives, through this Soviet-type committee, having a say on how company would re-organise its operations and staffing in order to stay afloat. No wonder the Haravghi and union bosses were celebrating after this deal. It could not have been worse for businesses. The irony is that things would have been much better if OEV never undertook this initiative. As we wrote on Tuesday, each business would have taken measures that suited it, in consultation with its own workers without having to consult OEV or the unions, which has been the case so far.
But now thanks to the foolishness of the OEV leadership, OEV’s members will not be able to take the necessary measures to save their business, without securing the approval of the union bosses. There is a solution for businesses – giving up their membership of OEV and refusing to be bound by the misguided deals it has struck.
