Cyprus - Agreement not enough to avoid teachers’ strike - December 14, 2010

PASYDY, the civil servants’ union, on 13 December cancelled a planned strike over government austerity measures after a meeting of the three major unions, PASYDY, SEK and PEO, with the country’s Finance Minister, Charilaos Stavrakis. Yet, the teachers’ unions went ahead with their two-hour work stoppage on Thursday 14 December. Initially the unions were furious as they said the government proposals targeted the masses and left the wealthy untouched. For example, the measures included the introduction of a 5% VAT on food and medicine in 2011. Stavrakis pledged to re-table proposals to tax wealth as soon as possible in consultation with the political parties and unions. PASYDY president Glafkos Hadjipetrou welcomed the agreement with the government, saying that “we can find the appropriate measures to exit the crisis through dialogue, without provocation and recriminations.”

English: http://www.cyprus-mail.com/cyprus/round-one-civil-servants/20101214

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.