Filenews 26 January 2024 - by Adamos Adamou
After negotiations that lasted almost a year, the management of Cyta and the trade unions EPOET (OHO-SEK), ASET-Cyta and SIDIKEK-PEO-Cyta signed yesterday afternoon a memorandum of understanding for institutional innovation and the evolution of the Organisation's staff.
The two sides' signature meeting was scheduled for one after noon, but last-minute consultations resulted in the memorandum of understanding being signed hours later.
Official announcements about the agreement are expected today, both from the management of the Organization and from the side of the three unions that represent the vast majority of workers. The whole project, as we wrote again, aims to equip Cyta to cope even better with the intensifying competition in telecommunications, as well as the technological challenges.
The agreement is expected to be put before the Ministry of Finance for final ratification, without excluding that before forwarding it to the organisation's political head, it will also be examined by Cyta's new board of directors, which will take over from the existing management this week.
The ratification by the Ministry of Finance, however, is imperative, since, in addition to the flexibility offered by the agreement to Cyta, it also seems to increase labour costs, through the upgrade provided for the organisation's hourly paid staff, which will now evolve, if it so chooses, into permanent staff and specifically into monthly staff under private law. The creation of two new categories of regulated employment features in the organisation, one under public law and the other under private law employment status, is one of the main points of the agreement, a development which, according to trade union sources, will mainly benefit hourly paid staff at Cyta.
The upgrade of the organisation's hourly salaried staff, which amounts to a few hundred, is perhaps the most important parameter of the agreement, as is the safeguarding of Cyta's public character, according to the same sources, who also confirmed that the provisions of the deal concerning incentives for existing public law personnel will also require legislative regulations.
Speaking yesterday on the philenews podcast, OHO SEK General Secretary Andreas Elias described yesterday as a milestone day for Cyta, which according to him sets a good precedent for other Public Law Organizations, According to him, the aim of the agreement is for Cyta to remain a Public Law Organization that will be able to serve citizens and that will lead us into the digital era in an effective way. The package of the agreement, he said, includes important changes, which have to do with a modern and reliable evaluation system aimed at employee development.
In his own statements to "F", the General Secretary of SIDIKEK – PEO Nikos Grigoriou said, among other things, that the agreement establishes a mechanism that will ensure that public law employees cannot be less than 60% of the total number of employees, "which satisfies us". The agreement, he added, also ensures that the trade union movement will have a role and say in any purchases or outsourcing of services, while also recording the upgrading of the organization's hourly paid staff. Specifically, he said that the agreement significantly upgrades the working conditions of hourly paid staff, which is converted into monthly staff of indefinite duration.
Hourly employees, as we wrote, will have an increase of 5.75% retroactively from January 1 but also for the first time a 0.5% contribution from the employer to the Welfare Fund and for medical care.
The agreement, which will last for six years, also makes it easier for the organization to recruit a specific number of new private law personnel, with SIDIKEK-PEO having reservations on the matter.
