Work of expert committee on working time reduction reaches impasse

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In December 1999, an "expert bargaining committee" set up by Greek trade unions and employers' organisations to investigate the potential for implementation of a 35-hour working week without loss of pay, held its final meeting. The committee's efforts to reach common conclusions proved unsuccessful.

After some months of work on reducing the working week to 35 hours without loss of pay, including seven plenary sessions, a joint "expert bargaining committee" has proved unable to reach a common conclusion which could form the basis for collective bargaining over the issue as part of Greece's new National General Collective Agreement. The committee was set up in summer 1999 (GR9908147N) by the Greek General Confederation of Labour (GSEE) and the main employers' organisations - theFederation of Greek Industries (SEV), the General Confederation of Greek Small Businesses and Trades (GSEVEE) and the Federation of Greek Traders' Associations (ESEE) - with the aim of investigating the potential for implementation of the trade unions' demand for a 35-hour week without loss of pay for workers (GR9902114N). It held its final meeting on 21 December 1999, and efforts to create a joint set of principles as a base for eventual continuation of the dialogue on the expert level were unsuccessful.

The committee examined all aspects of the issue exhaustively and, briefly, the positions of its members are as follows:

1. GSEE proposes that the implementation of the 35-hour week without a corresponding loss of pay, or lower increases, be negotiated at the level of the National General Collective Agreement, as a means of addressing unemployment and improving the quality of workers' lives. The employers' organisations regard implementation of the measure as premature and therefore detrimental to the competitiveness of the Greek economy, contending that it is more likely to increase unemployment than to decrease it. They also state that only the improvement of economic conditions can lead to growth and increased employment, and that administrative measures are unable to promote a rise in employment.

2. The GSEE experts propose the "active" implementation of the 35-hour week. This would involve providing incentives, tax relief and subsidies for enterprises implementing it, to offset the rise in production costs, for a period of three to five years. Employers' experts disagree, saying that such measures would place a general burden on the economy.

3. The GSEE experts also propose increasing pay premia for overtime exceeding statutory maximum working hours, so that the working time of people already in employment, which would be reduced by the 35-hour week, would be supplemented with new recruitment instead of more such overtime in excess of maximum working hours. In particular, they propose abolishing normal overtime (ie above usual working hours but below the statutory maximum) and replacing it with overtime exceeding maximum working hours, at the same time increasing pay for the latter form of overtime as follows: for legal overtime exceeding maximum working hours, hourly pay plus a premium of 100%; and when such overtime is illegal, hourly pay plus a premium of 150%. The experts from the employers' organisations believe that increasing pay for this form of overtime would heighten the negative impact of the 35-hour week on production costs, on competitiveness and, by extension, on the problem of unemployment.

4. The GSEE committee members propose progressive implementation of the 35-hour week within three years, staged on the basis of the number of people employed in an enterprise. The employers' organisations think that, despite this proposal's constructive elements, it cannot compensate for the adverse consequences for enterprises of implementation of a 35-hour week.

5. The committee members all agree that no conclusions may safely be drawn from the implementation to date of the 35-hour week in Greece (in banks - GR9906135F- public utilities and services, etc), and that this is also the case with implementation of the measure in other EU countries (France, Italy, etc). Therefore they feel that there is a need for the experts from both sides to constantly monitor and evaluate relevant developments.

6. The experts from GSEE and from the relevant employers' organisations believe that it is necessary for the competent state bodies (the Labour Inspectorate) to function properly with adequate staff, so that they can perform their advisory work and also systematically monitor violations of working time and of the other provisions of labour legislation, by imposing the appropriate penalties, in accordance with the spirit of ILO Convention no. 81 on labour inspection and the corresponding Greek laws.

7. GSEE and the employers' organisations affirm their position that unemployment is a major social problem, and that is why they will continue their efforts to address it.