Greece
The EIRO industrial relations observatory reports that the national private sector pay agreement in Greece will mean backdated increases on minimum wages of 2.9% from 1 January 2006 and 2.9% from 1 September 2006 with a 5.1% increase from 1 January 2007. According to the Eurostat statistical agency inflation in Greece has averaged around 3.4% over the last 12 months.
Read more at > EIRO (EN)
The SETCA/BBTK services trade union has set out some of the key issues it thinks should feature in the trade unions' demands in the forthcoming negotiations over the national agreement for 2006-2007. Above all it argues that an important theme of the negotiations should be solidarity among all workers whether currently active or not. The union's background note on the negotiations points out that economic growth is reasonable at 2.7% while company profits grew by 45% between 19 and 2004. Top managers saw their pay increase by 12% last year and a director of a company quoted on the stock
Public service unions have been forced to mobilise their members once again in order to secure the pay increases they negotiated for their members for the years 2006-2007. The public sector pay agreements are re-negotiated every two years although often with long delays. The various agreements on pay for 2006-2007 for public sector workers for were finally signed in May 2007 but have still not been implemented. A national mobilisation of workers in the local and regional government sector was called for 28 January while health workers will demonstrate on 4 February. [Read more at > FPCGIL (IT)
