Cyprus is currently beset by labour unrest from doctors to hotel employees to cement workers, predictable in that a number of collective agreements in different sectors are up for renewal by the end of the year.
Cement workers, on strike for around two weeks now, are demanding restoration of their previous overtime rates.
They said on Monday that their existing agreement provides for overtime at the rate of 1:1.5 on weekdays and 1:2 on Sundays and holidays. It was reduced to 1:1.25 by an interim agreement, valid from 2018 to 2020.
“The change was for a specific period of time,” a union rep said. “We are not violating anything.”
Given that cement workers are probably not in the top income bracket, and in contrast with government doctors, their demand appears reasonable.
Doctors on average earn €150,000, five times the average wage and they’re looking for around 20 per cent more.
This is at taxpayer expense and at a potential cost to the health system in terms of depleting resources that could be spent on care. A study has put the cost of the incentives for the doctors at €2.5 million. They want €4.5m.
Yes, doctors and cement workers may not be in the same league, but what we’re seeing is one group of employees seeking an inherent right and another that appears to be downright greedy.
At the bottom of the rung, hotel employee unions are working through a mediation proposal that could see them gain maybe 10 per cent over the next two years.
That would be for a group of workers already on minimum wage, plus a 13th salary for the 10,000 who don’t currently receive one.
In the same week, the deputy tourism minister tourism bragged about 2024 being a bumper year “with no more room for growth” in numbers during peak season.
It’s not that hoteliers shouldn’t benefit – that’s the point of running a business.
But when things were not going this well for them on and off over the years, they were the first ones out with the begging bowl, demanding money and incentives from successive governments.
All of these disconnects between the haves and the have-nots pale in comparison to the recently-approved 1.5 per cent pay rise for all public service employees who already get annual increases and CoLA.
It goes without saying that these millions could be put to better use.
The president never tires of telling us that healthcare is a “priority” for him as he did a few days ago when he laid the foundation stone for a new department at the oncology centre in Nicosia to house a special type of PET scan.
But it took until the end of his speech to barely mention the anonymous Cypriot benefactor whose €4.2 million helped kickstart the project, which is saving the government almost enough to cover the doctors’ demands.
It happens all too often in Cyprus that generous people help prop up the health system while state coffers are emptied into the pockets of the grifters. The president’s “priority” should first and foremost be to end that, not be a party to it.
