2024-09-25 22:19:26
The Ministry of Labor is preparing a road map, so that in six months from the approval of the Community Directive on the minimum wage, the foundations for changes and interventions in the field of Collective Agreements have been laid.
This is an initiative included in the scope of the Directive, which must become law of the state by mid-November. With the SSEs in the country moving at very low levels, it is also the main goal of the political leadership of the ministry to provide an additional stimulus to support wages in the private sector. Thus, until the completion of the relevant road map, it is expected to review all those memorandum measures that the trade unions complain of preventing the signing of new Collective Agreements. In these, the extensibility of these to all businesses of a sector and the criteria governing the process, as well as the operation of the Mediation and Arbitration Organization (OMED), have a dominant position, in order to facilitate the SSE from now on.
The bottom line increases aren’t helping enough
In the first phase, it seems that it is now realized that only the practical support of the SSEs can soon lead to higher wages. Successive increases in minimum wages may affect about 600,000 workers, but they do not help as much as they should in the area of average, nominal and real wages. That is why, after all, the recent report of the Labor Institute (INE) of GSEE showed that the last quarter of 2023 closed with the real average income from work in Greece only at 90% of the purchasing power compared to 2019, compared to 97 % in the EU of the 27 member states.
The fall in nominal real average income (as a consequence mainly of the increase in consumer goods, which was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in wages) is found in almost all branches of the economy. And this while labor productivity is higher than in 2019. Specifically, there is an increase of 1.6% in Industry, 20.4% in Manufacturing, 7.4% in Construction, 4.5% in Wholesale and Retail Trade, while it reaches 29.1% in Information and Communication.
But, on the contrary, the average per capita real sectoral wage, in the absence of SSE, does not show a corresponding increase. In Information and Communication it may increase by 22.3%, but it falls short by 6.8 points in relation to productivity. On the contrary, there is a 13.5% drop in Industry compared to 2019, a 2.3% drop in Manufacturing, 14.6% in Construction, 7.7% in Wholesale and Retail Trade, Transport, Accommodation and Catering services, while in The decline in Financial and Insurance activities reaches 26.1%.
More fixed-term contracts
An additional element that makes support for Collective Bargaining Agreements even more imperative are fixed-term contracts. According to data from 2023, the percentage of workers in Greece who worked on fixed-term contracts, either because they did not find a permanent job or because the nature of the job only matched a status, reached 12.8% of the total part time.
Given that the corresponding percentage in the EU, for the same period, was 8%, it follows that in the country fixed-term contracts are 50% more than in the rest of Europe. So there is a risk that these Contracts lead to lower earnings for those who sign them, as they are for a limited period of time. At this level, SSEs could offer a solution, delineating a more stable employment regime and limiting fixed-term contracts.
Significant lag in employment conditions
After all, the SSEs determine to a significant extent also the employment conditions. The data available to the Ministry of Labor, mainly through a Eurofound survey with a reference year of 2021, show that more than one in three workers in Greece (34.4%) worked more than 48 hours a week. This is the worst performance in the EU, with the next one, recorded in Romania, being 8.8 points lower. Even worse if the comparison is made with the average of Europe which is 20.8 points below, i.e. only at 13.6%.
This explains, of course, why 30.3% of workers in Greece state that working hours do not harmonize with other family or social obligations. In this element, the fact that almost six out of ten workers (58.2%) declared, in 2023, that they worked outside standard working hours also has a decisive contribution. This means they worked in shifts or with work in the afternoon or evening or during the weekend. This percentage is 24.3 points higher than the corresponding European average of 33.9%.
All these facts, which are within the knowledge of the Ministry of Labour, clearly show why the SSEs must be supported, which, in addition to wages, also determine working hours.