Labour Minister: climate in private sector explosive

LABOUR relations in the private sector are explosive following an employers’ recommendation to freeze payrolls, Labour Minister Sotiroulla Charalambous said yesterday, as she urged all sides to avoid actions that could worsen the climate.

 “Clearly the situation is very difficult, I would say explosive,” the minister tod state broadcaster CYBC. “The last thing we need at the moment is a generalised labour and social unrest.”

Unions, reacting to a recommendation by employers’ organisation OEV for a freeze in payrolls, have threatened strike action.

OEV has recommended to its members to freeze payrolls while businesses faced with serious financial problems should cut salaries.

Charalambous said everyone must abide by the industrial relations code and “avoid any action that would torpedo the already tense climate.”

The chamber of commerce and industry (KEVE) also urged calm and called on the sides to resolve the matter through dialogue.

“Confrontatoon will not help anything,” said KEVE deputy general secretary Marios Tsiakkis.

He stressed that businesses faced serious problems at the moment and it was not a time for excessive demands.

“Where raises and readjustments are justified they should be the subject of dialogue between workers and the owners of the businesses,” he said. “Where they are not justified it is obvious that they cannot be given.”

OEV urged its members to act unilaterally on the wage freeze after a meeting with unions PEO and SEK this week failed to deliver a deal for a package of austerity measures on new collective agreements.

As well as the wage freeze, the suggestions for wider discussion included a two-year halt to the Cost of Living Allowance and temporarily scrapping employers’ contributions to the provident fund, which currently rest at an average of around 5 per cent. Proposals to increase working hours per week, and readjusting overtime payments to a one-to-one ratio were rejected outright by the unions at a failed meeting on Thursday. 

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.