If everything unfolds today as mapped out at Friday’s “social partners” meeting and Sunday’s secret dinner at the Presidential Palace, we’ll have the finalisation of a massive opportunity squandered—an opportunity the Government itself created and then lost—for employees to secure a universal right to automatic cost-of-living adjustment (ATA) when inflation undermines purchasing power, in times of GDP growth.
The Government presented to employers and trade unionists a pro-worker policy framework that initially envisaged granting ATA to all employees on a scale basis. To all of them.
The employers went berserk against the Labour Minister. And the union leaders eagerly aided them, lambasting the minister and accusing him of “flares” and “hot air.”
It took them time to realise the ATA policy framework was real. And, as its creators had originally envisaged it, it didn’t require “social partners'” agreement. It demanded—if necessary—tabling a bill and passing legislation through Parliament. Or a decree.
Because employers consider ATA a disgraceful institution, whilst unions prioritise the survival of this institution as it functions today and strengthening the ATA rate for their clients. Meaning those who could or can organise themselves effectively within them.
In short, those already getting ATA. And first amongst them, civil servants—members of PASYDY. The unions in the private sector owe whatever success or impact their so-called “general strikes” have to PASYDY’s participation. Strikes that draw fewer people than Omonia’s friendlies against MEAP.
Consequently, not even as a joke could the unions entertain a decision that would keep the ATA’s contribution to restoring civil servants’ purchasing power below 100%—for instance, scaled ATA payment based on salary, or ATA payment only up to the basic salary level, calculated at around €2,500.
Even when the Labour and Finance Ministers made a revised proposal not to apply scaled ATA payment, nor even restrict it to the €2,500-a-month level, for those already enjoying more favourable arrangements through collective or other agreements or through custom and practice (!!!), still the unions didn’t mobilise people to defend “ATA for all”—even though ATA for those not enjoying it today would be… only up to €2,500.
About Friday’s meeting, they may tell us today or tomorrow that, as in all… tough negotiations, everyone loses something and everyone gains something.
So let them tell us what the thousands of low-to-middle-income private sector workers who don’t get ATA gained from the agreement. Nothing. Sweet nothing. They’ll get, this column assumes, the unreliable promise that “the battle for everyone to get ATA doesn’t end here”.
And they’ll get the Government’s promise that incentives will be given to businesses so that more private sector employers will… give ATA. Shall I say the word? I won’t, obviously.
The Government backed down. That’s the disappointing truth. It had initially proposed tabling legislation to amend the wage protection law so all workers would have ATA in times of growth and inflation.
And instead of standing firm, it retreated into the “social dialogue” of the “social partners,” who in the end came to an understanding amongst themselves—in the absence of those who were and will remain on the margins.
And just when society was crying out that it’s unfair for even super-high earners to get 100% ATA and was pleading for some painless progressive scales that would strengthen the case for ATA for all, the “social partners” and the Government will emerge today or tomorrow to tell us another problem’s been solved, on the basis of “everyone’s” sincere cooperation and… well done us for the healthy labour relations that function in Cyprus. Shall I say another word? I won’t say that one either, obviously.
Just as well the minimum wage is being “index-linked”. Self-evident to any rational person, unthinkable to certain others. If they hadn’t achieved even that, they’d have been laughable. We’re waiting to see, though, under what conditions minimum wage earners will get ATA. And with what restrictions.
Because one photogenic presence from retail in the photographs from the recent “partners” meetings worries us. They didn’t go there for the snacks.
