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Parliament passes laws on salary raises, exploiting state assets

Parliament on Thursday passed legislation that will freeze the powers of labour arbitration tribunals to award salary increases for a year, even in the private sector. Also passed were measures giving the government powers to proceed with the exploitation of state assets without going through the Court of Audit.
The controversial legislation was passed by 53 votes for and 47 against, having the support of ruling PASOK and in some cases the right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) party. The amendment on salary increases was tabled by Labour Minister Andreas Loverdos in response to two decisions by the Organisation for Mediation and Arbitration (OMED) that gave specific professional groups an annual salary hike greater than that agreed in the memorandum signed by Greece for the EU-IMF bailout package.
In addition to the one-year freeze on OMED salary increases, it restricts increases in the lowest salaries and wages to the levels of average European inflation for the space of two years.
Also passed were measures allowing the finance ministry to use state bonds as a compensation payment to laid-off Olympic Airways staff and postponing the collection of a tax on TV advertisements until October.
More broadly accepted was an amendment that makes the State General Accounting Office in charge of monitoring the execution of the budget, which was also supported by main opposition New Democracy.
Answering to charges of effectively abolishing labour arbitration, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said the bill did not abolish OMED or collective labour agreements but was a signal that when the country “is in the current fiscal state and social bodies had taken some very responsible decisions, no one has a right to diverge from them.”
Replying, ND MP Kostas Markopoulos accused the government of trying to relieve employers from the obligations to give salary increases in exchange for the indirect taxes and emergency levy that they paid.
In criticism of the amendment for exploiting state assets without going through the Court of Audit, opposition parties questioned whether the measure was constitutional.
The finance minister clarified that the legislation aims to give the Interministerial Privatisations Committee the power to evaluate state assets that is not given by current legislation, such as for radio and television frequencies.
He said that the law imposing a pre-contract inspection of agreements greater than one million euros had not been applied to privatisations since 2002. This position was, however, disputed by ND, while other MPs noted that the Court of Audit staff association had condemned the measure.
The left-wing parties, in particular, were highly critical of the measure that delayed payment of TV advertising taxes, pointing out that the government made no delay in “looting the income of workers”.
(source: ana-mpa)

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