That’s a bad Halloween trick for the half a million Greek retail workers. As the collective bargain expired and the Troika forbids a new collective bargain, they are threatened with wages cuts reaching from -35% up to -55%.
Employers will be glad to force their employees to sign individual employment contracts and new personnel will be hired with the minimum wage.
According to the president of National Confederation of Greek Commerce, Vassilis Korkidis, as of 1. November 2013:
– collective bargain contracts will be transformed to individual employment contracts
– new personnel will be hired with the minimum wage of 586 euro gross (wage cut -31.8%) and 511 euro gross for workers below 25 years old (wage cut 40.58%).
– until the expiration of collective bargain, new personnel would be hired with 860 euro gross.
– the wage losses will be even higher if further cuts in allowances will be considered.
At the same time, the union of retail workers will launch a strike on 3. November 2013, the first Sunday the government decided that shops will be open. The strike is to be launched for obvious reasons.
PS that’s the official approach of the situation in the sector. In real life, merchant-employees have been hiring personnel with the minimum wages already since 2012 form what I hear. And some ‘bad employers’ even hire personnel on probe for one month, then kick the personnel out of work and without paying the earned wage.
