STATEMENT
OF THE PANCYPRIAN FEDERATION OF LABOUR (PEO)
Measures now for a fairer distribution of the effects of the crisis and strengthening of social cohesion
12 January 2021, Nicosia
PEO considers that the measures that have been announced recently, for sure provide some relief to those directly affected by the decrees, but they are not enough to adequately address the demands of today’s harsh reality thousands of households face today.
The banking crisis of 2013, the haircut on bank deposits and the Memorandum policies that were imposed, had dramatically widened social inequality. It is obvious that the prolonged duration of the current health crisis is further increasing this inequality and clearly threatening our society’s cohesion.
Thousands of working people are living on benefits to survive for a long period of time. Small and medium-sized businesses are being destroyed and thus unemployment is rising. Young people who should be employed remain unemployed and without any income. Thousands of citizens are soon expected to find themselves in an even more difficult position when banks will begin to demand installments of their mortgages and threatening people with foreclosures
PEO considers that to ensure an elementary safeguarding of social cohesion, immediate, measures must be taken to strengthen the welfare state and promote a fairer distribution of the effects of the crisis on society.
The following measures should be taken:
– The duration of the suspension of installments should cover all working people, wage earners and self-employed, whose income has been severely affected by the situation
– The government must protect these workers from the risk of the foreclosure of the home or business.
– Subsidy of rents, with income criteria that will cover both professional premises and residential tenants.
– The reversal of the balance of power between working people and employers and the widespread deregulation in the labour market demand the legislative guaranteeing of minimum wages for all working people, rendering the rights provided by collective agreements mandatory for all employers, while the establishment of collective consultation mechanisms for the setting of minimum wages and corresponding rights must be created for those sectors where there are no collective agreements.
– Review and modernization of the social insurance system, sufficient pensions, the abolition of the 12% charge for retirement at 63, extension of the duration of the unemployment benefit, simplification of procedures and combating of bureaucracy for the timely payment of benefits
The objective difficulties, the crisis and accumulating problems, not only must not be used as an excuse to deny the need for measures to be taken with a longer-term perspective for an advanced and modern welfare state, but on the contrary it is these difficulties and social impasses that are making a new, progressive and just social agenda imperative in our times, far from the dogmatic extremes of Memoranda neoliberal policies, which with the crisis of the pandemic have now obviously been completely exposed.