THE STRIKE affecting the Nicosia-based café chain Voici la Mode (Café la Mode) Ltd rumbled into its third week yesterday, with a demonstration by non-striking staff outside the Labour Ministry.
Café la Mode Operations Manager Michalis Skordis said that 75 of the company’s staff demonstrated outside the ministry. “Only 16 staff members are still on strike, all at the Acropoleos Avenue branch”, he said. All three Nicosia branches were “working normally”.
In a statement yesterday, the company said the demonstration was held by staff “on their own initiative. It also accused PEO union of “misinformation”, in saying the company did not recognise the right of employees to organise.
PEO condemned the “unacceptable and anachronistic” action by the company of bringing employees in from elsewhere and using them as so-called protestors against the “legal and justified” action by the strikers.
Labour Minister Sotiroulla Charalambous said the demonstration by a group of employees who chose not to strike was “regrettable and unacceptable”. She said that her ministry has been making “every effort within the powers available to us” to find a solution to the dispute.
She said her ministry could not be asked to ignore the constitutional right of workers to associate and join a trade union.
PEO Central Organising Secretary Christos Toumbazos said the strikers were mostly migrants, paid around €600 per month to work in junior positions. He said the strike started after 45 out of a total of around 70 employees decided to join PEO, only to have the company refuse to discuss the issue because “as a principle, they don’t recognise the union”.
Toumbazos said PEO tried to convince the strikers to return to work while the union tried to open negotiations in line with the Industrial Relations Code.
“However when they decided to continue, we decided to support them”, he said. “The majority of are migrants, so we consider it even more important to take a stand on this”.
He said the strikers had all received letters from the company telling them they were “on indefinite leave”, adding that following pressure and threats – some of them physical – only 20 employees are now on strike.
In a further twist, a letter was sent yesterday to the Labour Minister by non-striking Café la Mode staff, who described themselves as “the vast majority (90 per cent) of Café la Mode Ltd personnel”. The 58 signatories of the letter accused “most of the strikers” of not even having completed six months of employment, and of humiliating, abusing and threatening the non-strikers.
The non-strikers were “the victims”, it said.
Toumbazos said the 58 signatories “include managers, supervisors and other employees that don’t even work in the cafés.” The letter, seen by the Cyprus Mail, contains only 29 non-Greek names, which poses the question of whether the other 29 usually wait on tables for €600 per month. The signatories include that of Operations Manager Skordis.
Asked what the strikers’ demand were now, Toumbazos said: “There is just one demand; that the company respects the Industrial Relations Code. If that happens, they will go back to work the next day.”
PEO has called for a rally at 6pm today in Makarios Avenue in Nicosia, inviting “the trade union movement and the whole of society” to show their solidarity on the matter.
