Public sector workers strike

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In October 2004, the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY) organised a well-supported general strike in the Greek public sector. The trade unions are demanding pay rises and improvements in areas such as family and maternity allowances, conditions for workers in unhealthy and arduous jobs, and staff promotions.

On 21 October 2004, a 24-hour nationwide strike was held in the public sector, organised by the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY). According to ADEDY, the strike was a complete success, with a participation rate of over 70%. This mobilisation sought to support union demands for long-term, fixed arrangements regarding industrial relations and pay setting for public sector employees (GR0312101N).

Recent changes in the public sector

In recent years important changes have occurred in the regulation of industrial relations and wage setting in the public sector, such as new regulations introducing part-time employment in public services and local authorities (GR0407101N), and a major increase in temporary and seasonal employment (GR0405102F). Also regarded as important are efforts to reorganise public services through longer operating hours and more shiftworking, to link productivity with pay, and to create new rules for career advancement, the system of promotions and the conditions for retirement and determination of pensionable pay.

The recent changes in the public services and the broader public sector, concentrated mainly on enacting a new presidential decree on public service fixed-term contract workers, passing a new law on public servants’ hierarchical structure and promoting part-time employment in local authorities and social services, have brought about a serious confrontation between the government and the trade unions. This confrontation culminated around: the presentation of the draft bill on the 2005 national budget, which provides, among other measures, for less spending on education and health and an average pay increase for public servants of around 3.2%, and a recent proposal from the Minister of the Interior to create sectoral rather than uniform pay scales in the public sector and individualise pay based on the performance and output of each authority.

This was the context of the nationwide strike by public servants in October, in which pensioners and fixed-term contract workers in public services and local authorities also took part. Collective bargaining began earlier in the year between the government and ADEDY, but has several times been eclipsed by successive government proposals on incomes policy, public servants’ job transfers and public service recruitment schedules for the coming year. As early as 20 August 2004, ADEDY had sent a letter to the Ministry of the Interior, Public Administration and Decentralisation (YPESDDA) setting out many of the same demands put forward in the October strike. That they are still unmet indicates to commentators that the social dialogue procedures followed to date have been ineffective and that relations between the unions and the government have been disrupted to a significant degree.

ADEDY’s demands and positions

The principal pay and non-pay demands put forward by ADEDY around its strike on 21 October were as follows:

• for public employees who have completed nine years of compulsory education, increasing basic monthly pay from EUR 590 to EUR 1,100, with the prospect of a final rate of EUR 2,200 after 35 years of service. For employees with a university education, the final monthly pay before retirement should be increased to EUR 3,300;

• extending a current EUR 176 allowance to newly appointed employees in a broader range of sectors and authorities;

• introducing new arrangements for retroactive payment of the family allowances;

• doubling the family allowance and granting it to lone-parent families;

• increasing the maternity allowance for each child;

• raising current income levels, described as untenable, and restructuring tax coefficients and scales for 2004;

• extending the provision of special conditions for workers with arduous and unhealthy occupations (see below) to the public services;

• recognising time spent in military service as pensionable;

• basing all internal promotions on a points system and selecting supervisors solely on the basis of objective criteria; and

• increasing spending on education and health (to 5% and 6% of GDP respectively).

Pay increases

ADEDY has sent an invitation to the government to begin collective bargaining in the public services in May 2005. It describes the present economic and pay status of Greece’s public servants as particularly adverse, directly linked with current austerity policies and policies to restructure the public services. For example, ADEDY states that:

• the level of public sector employees’ pay is the second lowest in the 'old' EU 15, and average pay stands at around 68.9% of the EU 15 average;

• low basic pay directly affects pensions, which are extremely low;

• not only are pay supplements and other social benefits kept at low levels, but also they are not taken into account when setting pensions; and

• public employees are said to be subject to unreasonable discrimination, and as a result pay varies widely among employees with the same formal qualifications and the same job tasks.

Furthermore, given the substantial increases in the prices of basic consumer goods since the introduction of the euro, ADEDY sees an urgent need to increase the pay of public servants in the direction of real convergence with wages in the rest of the EU. On the basis of the unions’ demands, a new pay scale that would offset losses of pay in previous years would require much more generous rises than the 3.2% cited in the draft budget for 2005.

Arduous and unhealthy occupations

Expanding the current system of classifying jobs as 'arduous and unhealthy occupations' (known as BAE) would have a significant, mainly positive effect on public servants’ and local authority employees’ real wages and working conditions. ADEDY’s proposals in this regard provide for:

• reducing the pensionable age by five years for workers covered by the system;

• an increment on pensions for those concerned; and

• introduction of an additional contribution to fund BAE, similar to that in effect for people insured by the Social Insurance Foundation (IKA) (1.40% of pay for the employee and 2.20% for the employer).

The unions’ view is that public servants have long been unfairly treated, since a recent reform achieved full equivalence of their pensionable ages with those of private sector employees. In addition, the inclusion of around 50,000 public servants in the BAE regulation, according to estimates by ADEDY, is justified by the occupational risk involved in the jobs of many public servants in various sectors. At present the number of private sector employees covered by the BAE regulations stands around 700,000. The categories of public servants to which the proposal relates include: cleaners; hospital workers; cemetery workers; military factory workers; and employees at the State Chemical Laboratory and the National Observatory of Athens.

Although the unions have been demanding for some time that the BAE be extended to the public sector, it has returned to the agenda under new conditions. First, the most recent social insurance law provides for a redefinition of BAE in a special presidential decree expected to be issued before the end of 2004. Second, the demand has been supported by coordinated industrial action by a number of sectoral member federations of ADEDY. Before jointly signing the ADEDY proposal, these federations highlighted working conditions adverse to workers’ health and safety, underlining the importance the federations attribute to this demand. Finally, the unions contend that the public sector has displayed significant gaps and delays in implementing and observing legislation on the protection of workers’ health; as a result only 352 of the 1,040 public authorities characterised as involving hazardous work have health and safety committees. Furthermore, there are rarely works doctors or safety officers in public authorities.

Commentary

The upheavals caused in recent times by successive attempts to reform industrial relations and works rules in the public services and local authorities have caused the views of the trade union movement to diverge markedly from those of the government. Even though such efforts have been going on for at least a decade, the recent successful strike in the public sector, in conjunction with the fact that important issues remain unresolved - among them the matter of reducing fixed-term contract workers’ working time - and with a decision by the unions in the private and broader public sector, represented by the Greek General Confederation of Labour (GSEE), to take widespread industrial action during December 2004, demonstrate that at the present juncture the climate of industrial relations is entering a stage of confrontation stronger than in previous years. At the same time, in the public sector at least, the settlement of a number of demands from the workers’ side, such as the issue of BAE, appears to be long overdue and their final resolution is awaited. (Lefteris Kretsos, INE/GSEE-ADEDY).