According to ‘P’ sources, a day after the three-hour national work stoppage, (yesterday), Panayiotou spoke with representatives of the parties involved, with his primary goal being to secure that the dialogue continues through the launch of a new effort early next week.
Officially, the Labour Ministry is yet to declare a deadlock in the CoLA talks and is determined to carry on, amid strong positions expressed by both unions and employers in the wake of and following the strike action.
Business Associations are categorically against CoLA’s extension across the board, whilst the unions expect immediate measures, that will refute, as they say, the government’s “communication stunt”, such as issuing a directive to incorporate CoLA in the minimum wage and submitting a bill to extend collective agreements.
Former DISY leader, MP Averof Neophytou gave his own take on the current state of labour affairs, noting that attacking “tax injustice” is the best defence against price hikes. He strongly critisised the government for trying, as he claimed, to implement CoLA without connecting it to productivity, contradicting, Neophytou added, the country’s European obligations and intensifying social inequalities and standard of living gaps between employees.
Neophytou’s approach is that a socially just approach is not to insist on an obsolete mechanism, but implement a new policy that is based on extensive tax cuts for employees based on family income and the real needs of every household, social support measures for 65 thousand people living under the poverty line and maintaining business competitiveness so companies won’t be forced to carry over product and services costs, feeding inflation.