Public hiring to change
In a further attempt to increase transparency in the public sector, the government yesterday revealed that it intends to change the law so that civil servants can no longer be hired on short-term contracts that can be used to win votes. Following a meeting of the Cabinet, Interior Minister Yiannis Ragousis revealed that PASOK aims to introduce new, tougher measures for the hiring of staff, especially temporary workers in public administration. The key element of the new law will be that contracts fixed for short periods of time, and often renewed, will be phased out by the end of next year and will only be offered after that if all the permanent positions have been filled. The government views these short-term contracts as being open to abuse, as workers become dependent on their bosses to keep renewing the deals and this could mean they could be coerced politically. PASOK also intends to scrap the interview procedure that New Democracy had introduced for some public sector positions. The Socialists believe that this is another weak spot in the hiring system, since theoretically it allows an interviewer to be politically motivated when rejecting an applicant. Instead, the government proposes that all applications be dealt with by the Supreme Council for Personnel Selection (ASEP), the state body that handles applications and sets tests for jobs in the public sector. PASOK is considering creating 13 regional ASEP offices to handle the increased workload. The Socialists have already indicated their intention to make the hiring process more fair and transparent by moving quickly once they came to power to scrap European Union-funded apprenticeship programs that had given more than 20,000 young people temporary jobs in the public sector. Known by the French term «Stage,» the apprenticeships were at the center of controversy during the election campaign when PASOK accused the then New Democracy government of using the scheme to win votes by allegedly hiring hundreds of new interns to curry favor with the conservative party’s supporters.
