Filenews 14 December 2022 - by Eleftheria Paizanou
The warnings about the "lowering of the switch" at the Dhekelia Power Station by EAC employees have again brought to the fore the need to regulate strikes in essential services. Employers' organisations are demanding that the right to strike be regulated, as other countries have done, in order to protect the Cypriot economy and citizens.
The employers' side believes that citizens cannot be held hostage by the strikers. On many occasions, employers' organizations have complained that strikes on essential services violate the agreements of both the Industrial Relations Code and the Agreement on the Procedure for the Settlement of Labor Disputes in Essential Services, which was signed decades ago between the social partners. In fact, they had demanded that the agreement be enacted by law.
The agreement, which supplements the Industrial Relations Code, defines as essential services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of all or part of the population. In the agreement, essential services are considered to be those relating to works, works or activities necessary for the uninterrupted supply of electricity, water, telecommunications, the safe operation of airports, hospitals, prisons and ports.
The agreement provides for the exhaustion of the social dialogue and the referral of the dispute to the Arbitration Committee.
The suspension of the strike measures announced by the EAC workers was demanded by OEB, which in a statement said that trade unions and the state are responsible for the situation. According to OEB, trade unions take advantage of the lack of an institutional framework regulating the exercise of the right to strike in essential services, while the state is deaf to calls for the legislation of the social partners' agreement on the procedure for resolving labour disputes in essential services.
For its part, the CCCI stressed the need for legislative regulation of strikes in essential services, in order to have the necessary legislative framework that will protect consumers and society.
It is recalled that in 2012, when airports were paralysed due to the strike of air traffic controllers, the Parliament had approved a bill in the form of urgency, which regulates strikes, in order to safeguard the interests of the Republic. However, yesterday, other associations and organizations had called on EAC workers to have second thoughts and suspend the strike.
847,000 lost working days
According to data from the Ministry of Labour, from 2011 to 2021 there were a total of 316 strikes in Cyprus, during which a total of 178,364 workers abstained from work, while 846,632 working days have been lost.
- In 2011 there were 14 strikes, of which 1,499 workers were affected, while 4,712 working days were lost.
- In 2012, there were 56 strikes, of which 37,542 workers were affected and 48,294 working days were lost.
- In 2013, due to the memorandum, 44,089 workers participated in 47 strikes, which resulted in the loss of 605,464 working days.
- In 2014, 43 strikes took place, of which 29,670 hours of work were lost and almost 24 thousand were affected. workpeople.
- In 2015, there were 31 strikes, of which 13,224 working days were lost and 6,393 workers were affected.
- In 2016, there were 14 strikes, of which 35,801 working days were lost and 5,520 workers were affected.
