SOME 94 per cent of the members of the Telecommunications authority CyTA’s biggest union have voted in favour of industrial action to prevent privatisation. The members on Thursday authorised their leadership to impose strike measures when deemed necessary. It was a surprise about-turn considering the government had gone out of its way to keep the employees on side, giving them a choice of employer, offering everyone jobs on the same pay in the state sector, guaranteeing their pensions and even offering them a year’s trial at the privatised company before deciding on staying.
There was nothing more the government could have offered them even though their unions went to the president demanding additional safeguards in the government-drafted bill. This incessant pandering to the unions of the SGOs by the government is the reason employees have decided to fight against privatisation. The government has shown such obvious weakness in its handling of privatisations, constantly retreating and giving in to demands that unions have decided it can be defeated. No wonder CyTA’s employees, after being given everything imaginable short of staying at home and having their salary deposited in their bank account every month, concluded they could stop privatisation altogether.
It was a perfectly reasonable conclusion given the government’s lack of resolve and President Anastasiades’ efforts to keep the employees happy at a big cost to the taxpayer. The government gave Limassol port’s licensed port workers close to €30 million in compensation to go quietly and then agreed to also pay off their employees’ compensation which was another million. It had offered less but as soon as the workers took industrial action the amount was generously increased. Astonishingly, nobody said anything against this criminal waste of taxpayers’ money because they did not want to antagonise the port-workers, who would be giving up their protection racket at Limassol port.
The same embarrassing spinelessness was displayed in the case of the EAC. First it would have been privatised but strong union opposition caused the government to have second thoughts and it proposed a postponement. It had originally agreed with the troika the unbundling of the Authority into two different companies – one responsible for the grid and the other for production – and keeping only the one dealing with production under state ownership. The EAC unions would not hear of this, insisting first that both entities remained under state control before changing tack and demanding the unbundling did not take place. They wanted to keep the authority a big, inefficient, state monopoly, as it had always been.
If it had not been for the troika, the eager-to-please-the unions Anastasiades would have given in by now. The problem is that the privatisations and the split of the EAC had been agreed with the lenders and are a condition for the release of the final tranche of financial aid, which, according to the finance minister, Cyprus still needs. The troika wrote to the government at the end of the year telling it that it wanted the unbundling to go ahead and for the new company responsible for the transmission and distribution grid to be privatised. According to press reports on Saturday, the troika insists on the unbundling but has agreed that the two new entities would remain the ownership of the state.
Whether the unions agree to this remains to be seen. How the government manages this awkward situation – with unions on one side believing their threats would see off privatisation and the troika on the other threatening not to release the final tranche of assistance – is anyone’s guess. What is clear is that Anastasiades has made a complete mess by making promises to union bosses, whom he repeatedly invited to the presidential palace for talks, in the belief that he could find a way of pleasing everyone. Not only did he not achieve this, but now he has CyTA employees, whom he gave everything they asked for to, taking a hard-line against privatisation.
He is paying for his brinkmanship and the foolish belief that by pandering to the unions he would win their loyalty and support. Instead he showed them that he was weak opponent, encouraging them to believe that he could be emphatically defeated. Instead of viewing him as their ally and guardian, as Anastasiades had hoped, they have come to view him as a pushover who would not have the guts to pursue privatisation if they put up a fight.
