Ministry working on uniform public sector wages
An across-the-board wage structure for people working in the public sector is nearing completion as the Interior Ministry has began working on how to incorporate 15 professions, including state hospital doctors and members of the armed forces, into the system.
Sources told Kathimerini that the ministry is examining changes that affect roughly 300,000 state employees. The 15 professions have 17 supplementary pay deals, which will be scrapped as part of the reforms.
The ministry intends to keep just two additional pay categories, one which reflects ?special working conditions? such as those for soldiers, while the second will take into account the number of years an employee has served and how much responsibility they hold.
The government has committed to establishing a single wage structure for all departments in a bid to end the various supplementary pay packages awarded over the years, leading to great imbalances in public sector salaries.
The move also reflects the drive to reduce civil servants? wages and bonuses. Their take-home pay was cut by about 20 percent last year.
It appears that the government faces a struggle to convince university and technical college (TEI) lecturers to accept the restructuring of their salaries. ?We are prepared to discuss all the other issues; not this one,? the president of the Hellenic Federation of University Teachers? Associations (POSDEP), Nikos Stavrakakis told Kathimerini.
The lecturers have written to the government to ask that their wage structure is kept separate from the rest of the civil service, arguing that they have suffered greater cuts to their salaries over the last two years than other public professions.
