UNION bosses met yesterday and voiced their support for the government’s economic measures, which the political parties, apart from AKEL, were opposed to. This did not come as a surprise as the Christofias government’s closeness to the unions and willingness to accept their diktats has been evident all along. The president is after all a communist and has never tried to hide the fact that he would always side with the workers.
The labour minister regularly consults the unions before finalising the government’s employment policies and the finance ministry shelved measures, aimed at reducing the budget deficit, as soon as union bosses voiced opposition to them. Understandably, the labour leaders felt obliged to help out the government in its hour of need and announced yesterday that they had generously agreed to the renewal of the collective agreements in the broad public sector with zero pay rises.
The announcement was clearly aimed at helping the government push the measures that it prepared at the behest of the unions – a clampdown on tax evasion by giving sweeping powers to tax inspectors, an increase of one per cent on corporate tax and taxation of real estate at current prices. This was the deal Christofias struck with the unions – he would tackle tax evasion and make the wealthy pay more in taxes and workers would agree to no pay increases.
The general secretary of SEK union, Nicos Moiseos made this point very clearly, speaking after yesterday’s meeting. “The workers of the public and broader public sector, agreeing to the renewal of collective agreements with zero pay rises, are making a big sacrifice and expect similar sacrifices from others, both on the issue of tax evasion and the taxation of the wealthy.”
This talk of sacrifice is shameless propaganda, because the labour aristocrats of the public and broader public sector would not go without pay rises. They would still move up the incremental pay scales at the end of the year, as they did at the start of this year, and this represents a pay rise of about 3.5 per cent and when the Cost of Living Allowance is incorporated the increase would be closer to 4 per cent. The big sacrifice they are making is to forego the annual pay increase – about 2 per cent – over and above that.
While workers in the private sector are being made redundant or forced to take pay cuts, the public sector scroungers, whose inflated wages and pensions are the cause of the big budget deficit the government is obliged to reduce, would have us believe that they are making a big sacrifice by limiting their annual pay rises to four per cent. The government will reward this big sacrifice by clamping down on tax evasion, causing even bigger problems to the struggling economy.
We did not expect anything less in an era of union rule.
