Civil servants’ wage bill ready
A draft version of a unified pay structure for civil servants, which does away with the variations between ministries and a range of supplementary pay packages, is to be submitted in Parliament on Thursday by Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Administrative Reform Minister Dimitris Reppas.
According to the new scheme, the basic salary for new recruits in the civil service will be 780 euros gross, up from 711 euros that applies now. The top wage, for those with a university degree and a number of years in the job, will be 2,200 euros. Productivity-linked bonuses will be available for certain employees but they are expected to be relatively small, sources said.
Those who will be hardest hit by the new salary structure are around 14 percent of civil servants, or some 100,000 people, who will see their salaries cut by up to 40 percent.
Top earners will see their monthly wage packet slashed by up to 1,300 euros while those on the lowest rung of the salary ladder will be eligible for small increases of around 6 or 7 percent. The increase is due to the increase in the minimum wage to 780 euros from 711.
Some categories of civil servants — such as court officials, state hospital doctors and university professors — will not be included in the new wage structure at this stage.
Employees of ministries, local authorities and state companies, as well as state school teachers, staff in Parliament and priests will be included in the scheme.
The strongest opposition the government faces in implementing a new raft of austerity measures — chiefly a plan to slash thousands of jobs in the public sector — is from the civil servants.
Angry public sector workers have staged sit-ins this week at several government offices, including the Finance and Labor ministries, to draw attention to their grievances.
The sit-ins, which civil servants have pledged to continue, have complicated the efforts of foreign inspectors to complete an audit of Greek state finances on which the release of crucial rescue loans depends.
