Civil servants have their January salary slashed
The new salary system for civil servants went into effect on Tuesday, with thousands of public sector workers getting a considerably reduced salary for the first 15 days of January.
The retrospective validity of the system, affecting salaries dating from November 1, 2011, resulted in considerable amounts of money being withheld from civil servants as their pay for the new year?s first couple of weeks was reduced by between 206 and 1,004 euros.
This is the first time that the single salary system has been applied for the majority of civil servants, unlike Finance Ministry employees, who had their salaries adjusted to the new system earlier.
Yet even without the retrospective payments, the cuts are considerable across the board: For instance, newly hired tax officers with a university degree have had their salary cut by 934 euros per month, while their colleague with a degree and 33 years of service will be hit with a 1,410-euro cut on a monthly basis; an Agricultural Development Ministry employee with six years of service received 1,600 euros per month in 2010, but will now see their monthly salary drop 23.4 percent to 1,225 euros.
