REPRESENTATIVES of the Cyprus Airways unions recently had their first meeting with the mediation service of the Ministry of Labour in order to discuss management’s proposals for pay cuts. Unions have already expressed objections to the proposed across-the-board pay cuts, arguing that the lower earners should be exempt.
They also demanded that before any decision was taken on the pay cuts, the management had to clarify how many employees would be made redundant as this would affect the savings that the company would have to make. If 150 instead of 120 workers left the company the saving would be €1.3 million higher and thus a smaller contribution would be required from the remaining employees.
Newspaper reports suggested that low earners in the company were furious with the proposal for a 10-per cent across-the-board wage cut and were set to oppose any such move. And we do not yet know how the pilots’ union would react to pay cuts, considering many of its members contested the cuts made four years ago in court, claiming that the company had acted illegally in not securing the pilots’ approval.
This affair is a sad reflection of the poor state of industrial relations in Cyprus, where the class struggle theory still reigns supreme.
Union bosses are unable to move on from the idea that workers and management of the same company are
enemies constantly engaged in a zero-sum game, in which one side’s gain is the other’s loss. They cannot understand that conditions have changed and the only way forward is through co-operation.
The fact that the Labour Ministry mediation service has become involved is an illustration of this antiquated mentality.
Everyone agrees that unless Cyprus Airways drastically cuts its operating costs now, it will suffer the same fate as Eurocypria by the end of the year. Yet not even the risk of the company closing down seems to be able to persuade the unions of the need for co-operation. Perhaps management is also to blame for not bringing the unions into the decision-making process.
What any rational person would have expected, would have been for top management and union representatives to sit down together and decide what needed to be done to turn the company around. The executives should be setting targets, explaining how they would achieve them and listening to the suggestions of union bosses – some of which would be useful. But more importantly, the union bosses should, for once, be putting the survival of the company above the interests their members, who need to make sacrifices in order to have their jobs next year.
Do they need the mediation service to help them understand this simple truth?
