Hundreds of sanitation workers remain unpaid
Hundreds of fixed-term contract municipal sanitation workers around Greece have not been paid even though the government passed a legislative amendment in June approving their rehiring after their earlier contracts expired.
The snag has been attributed to certain commissioners on the State Audit Council refusing to sign off on the workers’ pay slips because rehiring employees on repeated fixed-term contracts to carry work of a permanent nature contravenes the Greek Constitution and EU law.
The development bodes ill, as the government had passed the amendment in order to end an extended strike by sanitation workers that had resulted in piles of trash building up in the streets of the capital and other Greek cities.
In June, garbage collectors went on strike when hundreds of their colleagues found themselves facing redundancy as their fixed-term contracts expired in the wake of a court ruling that the practice of hiring state workers on successive short contracts rather than having them appear on the payroll as permanent staff was unconstitutional.
