A PUBLIC row raged on yesterday over what the government claims is the hoteliers’ practice of firing Cypriot workers in favour of cheaper, often uninsured, EU personnel.
Labour Minister Sotiroulla Charalambous yesterday picked up where President Demetris Christofias left off in censuring the hoteliers on Tuesday, saying inspections have found that over one-third of the EU nationals working at hotels had no social security or other benefits.
Charalambous said the system was not only discriminatory, but in some cases also illegal, as a large percentage of non-Cypriot EU workers were working uninsured.
“The principle of free movement for workers means that you give the EU workers jobs at the same terms and conditions as you give Cypriots,” said Charalambous. “The right to employ EU workers doesn’t give you the right to keep them uninsured. From the total of EU workers we inspect, over 30 per cent are uninsured. Is this acceptable?”
Charalambous said non-Cypriot EU workers made up 45 per cent of the hotel industry’s workforce and that many Cypriots were being fired.
“Should we allow this to go unnoticed as a state? The state can’t have a police officer in every workplace, nor do we want to lead labour relations to that point,” she said. “But of course, we are concerned when we see cases of mass [Cypriot] redundancies arriving at the ministry, at the moment when the tourist season is starting with very good signs.”
She said this didn’t comply with efforts that are being made by all involved to support tourism. “Isn’t it contradictory?” Charalambous wondered. “Can we use the free movement of workers in a way that will violate the principle of equality? The way things are now, EU workers aren’t being paid properly and are being used as a counterweight against local workers.”
PASYXE chairman Haris Loizides denied the accusations and condemned what he said was the labour ministry’s “totalitarian practices” of carrying out surprise inspections on businesses.
Loizides said the employment of EU workers was the business owners’ right and a way of helping them deal with the high cost of operating their hotels.
“It is a legal right of anyone to employ EU workers. They are a tool that comes in at the start of the season and departs at the end of the season,” he said. “It doesn’t create additional burdens for the business, so the business can be viable.”
Asked about the high percentage of hoteliers caught employing people without insurance, Loizides said PASYXE would never support hotel owners caught violating the law.
But he also cast doubt over the ministry’s figures suggesting they are taking statistics from other industries and combining them with those of the hotel industry.
“It is a fact that since Mrs Charalambous has been minister something like a terror campaign has started. The raids on hotels remind us of gangster movies,” he said. “Ministry officials don’t use the front entrance, but the back or side door; they even come in from the beach without warning anyone.”
When it was pointed out that this was the whole point of inspections, he added: “Do we want to go back to other (times and) states, where there were regimes I wouldn’t like to characterise?”
Loizides was also enraged with the intervention of the Chairman of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO), Alekos Orountiotis, who also came down hard on hoteliers.
Loizides said the CTO buried its head in the sand, enraging Orountiotis during a debate on a state radio news show yesterday.
“Whenever there is something positive, you, as the CTO try to identify yourselves with it, yet when there is something negative, you bury your head in the sand,” Loizides said.
He said the fact that Orountiotis linked the improvement in tourist figures this year, with his appointment as head of the CTO proved his point.
Orountiotis defended the CTO and accused Loizides of steamrolling everything.
“We stood by the hoteliers’ side for two years running now, more than any other board of directors has done. We fought battles to convince the government to take measures in favour of hoteliers. We say that, yes we have succeeded, because everyone worked for it together.”
The state has offered millions to the hotel industry, including a €52 million boost in 2008 to help reduce hotel prices.
