Unions warn of ‘indefinite strike’ over disagreements with education ministry

Trade unions Psem-Peo and Oekydy-Sek on Friday denied reaching an agreement with the education ministry over outstanding issues affecting employees in school support programmes, warning of further strike action unless their demands are met. The unions staged a 24-hour strike on Friday over the lack of income support during the summer months and unresolved employment issues affecting workers in education support programmes. “The ministry is lying, unfortunately, and the minister, with what she says, has nothing to do with the truth,” Psem-Peo secretary general Andreas Kounnis said during the protest. “We have reached the point of announcing measures, being called to meetings, being asked to postpone from week to week, and the whole issue continues and no one realizes that there are hundreds of workers who have no income,” said Oekydy-Sek secretary general George Constantinou. He highlighted that over 100 workers in support programmes were currently unemployed, while more than 300 remained without income. Speaking during the strike in Nicosia, an employee of the state training institutes said that staff had been left without income for five to six months since being turned into permanent employees in May. “Instead of job security, this regime once again brings us face to face with financial impoverishment. We have our loans, our obligations, who will pay these for us?” he said. The trade unions also alleged that the relevant law on support programmes was yet to be implemented, saying the two main issues concerned workers who remained without income during the summer months, as well as workers who were part of education support programmes and currently remained unemployed. Kounnis said that public teachers were being hired to fill the positions of these workers with overtime, “which costs the state many times more” accusing the government and the education ministry of “poor planning and programming”. He added that since 2012, workers in support programmes had gone through “a thousand waves, the service market, which we abolished with the struggles, wage employment, bills that would solve the problems. But at the end of the day, the problems have multiplied.” Kounnis recalled the 24-hours protest held before the presidential palace in September, during which the government and the education ministry had pledged to solve the problems. Asked about the ministry’s requested extension to respond to the unions demands, he said that this was “a common tactic in recent times, to ask for an extension in order to resolve the problems. We have shown great goodwill in the dialogue; we have given time and what we are constantly receiving is a postponement from the government”. “We are discussing without any substantial result,” he said, emphasising that no agreement had been reached with the ministry after the announcement of the strike 15 days ago, with the ministry requesting a 15-day period to examine the proposal presented to it on October 2 regarding the income replacement allowance during the summer months. Meanwhile, Constantinou said that that no further delay could be tolerated. “Six months have passed since then and the government, a bill that it submitted and became law, has not implemented it and is still looking for how to implement it,” he said, adding that “every employee in the programmes is paying the bride price for the government’s inability to implement a law that it itself submitted to parliament.” Constantinou said that the government considers workers who remain without income to still be employed, even though it is forcing them to stop working without paying them a salary. He recalled the “ten-year struggle” to abolish the “illegal purchase of services”, so that workers would receive unemployment benefits during the period when the school year ends and they are unemployed. “Instead of there being a regulation on this issue, from day to day and from month to month they postpone the decision,” he said. He noted that a round of consultations was completed with all the relevant state services in July, during which it was agreed that the issue should be regulated by a political decision by Labour Minister Marinos Mousiouttas and Education Minister Athena Michaelidou, saying that the unions appealed to both ministries and were promised that the issue would be resolved. “Unfortunately, nothing has happened. We have reached the point of announcing measures, being called to meetings, being asked to postpone from week to week, and the whole thing continues and no one realizes that there are hundreds of workers who have no income,” he said.