ON WEDNESDAY, workers at the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) went ahead with a strike they had been threatening with for weeks, to protest the government’s plans for an offshore unit to process liquid natural gas (LNG).
Staff stopped working from 8am until 11am, arguing that the technology for an offshore unit is untested and that the authorities should focus exclusively on their plans for an onshore terminal.
But exactly how legal were their actions?
They weren’t, according to the Labour Ministry, as they had no relation to working disputes. The day before the strike, Trade Minister Antonis Michaelides warned unions that their strike would have no legal basis due to the fact that their complaints were not related to work issues and they could therefore face prosecution. This, he said, was backed by the Attorney-general and the Labour Minister.
A source at the Labour Ministry told the Sunday Mail that the legality of a trade union’s strike, and the consequences of an illegal one, could only be determined by a District Court.
“According to the Law for Unions, if there is no working difference then there is no strike. In the EAC strike, the correct proceedings were not followed,” he said.
He said it was up to the EAC Board of Directors to decide whether to take the strikers to court. “But what their [the Board] role in this whole matter is, I still haven’t fathomed,” he added.
Attorney-general Petros Clerides refused to comment on the strike, or even offer an account of the repercussions an ‘illegal strike’ could entail.
“The matter is clearly between EAC workers and the company, and I will not comment on the matter for any reason,” he said on Thursday.
The Employers’ and Industrialists’ Federation (OEV) rushed to condemn the strike, issuing an announcement on Wednesday strongly condemning the stoppage.
“With sadness, OEV has noted that despite its repeated pleas, the unions of the Electricity Authority of Cyprus moved ahead with their work stoppage, resulting in power cuts in many areas in Cyprus,” read the announcement.
“The stoppage was totally unjustifiable, without having any working matter as an objective. This was clearly a ‘political’ strike,” it added.
The federation urged the government to take legal measures against the EAC workers.
“Following [Wednesday’s] work stoppage, the state must take all the legal measures it can, so that similar phenomena of such irresponsible behaviour are not repeated by unions in the future. The public and state economy cannot possibly be at the mercy of unions for matters that aren’t in their authority.”
