The meeting between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the trade unionists in the POE-OTA union federation, which represents the majority of local authority workers, was concluded on Tuesday.
The two sides met in order to try and find a solution that addresses the demands of municipal sanitation workers and avoids dangers to public health as a result of lengthy periods of uncollected refuse combined with the high temperatures expected in the coming days.
The PM’s office issued a statement which did not specify the exact timetable of when the new positions would open up. Mr. Tsipras vowed to also implement a points system based on the Interior Minister, Panos Skourletis’s amendment. He also pledged that the government was in favor of keeping refuse collection in the hands of local governments and not to hand it over to private interests.
The president of the federation said that the prime minister made new proposals that they will examine later in the day, however, he did not reveal whether the strike will be suspended.
“New proposals were brought to the table and discussed,” the chief of the union that is demanding the permanent hiring of some 6,500 fixed-term contract workers, said. “We will go to the executive committee and make a decision.”
According to the Athens-Macedonia News Agency (ANA-MPA), Tsipras conceded to a demand that contract workers over the age of 45 be eligible to compete for a job in municipal sanitation services when these are proclaimed through the state’s ASEP hiring mechanism. This was one part of POE-OTA’s complaint, as the age limited precluded many of the 6,500 contract workers from seeking a permanent position.
The prime minister, however, did not go so far as to promise that the contracts of these workers would be renewed – as POE-OTA demanded – stressing that this would be in violation of the Constitution and of Greece’s commitment to international creditors to curb civil service hirings.
Tension heated up in central Athens on Tuesday when the police prevented the municipal waste collection workers from entering the Maximos Mansion.
The union is currently convening to reach its final decisions. POE-OTA started a strike last week that has resulted in thousands of tons of garbage building up on the streets of Athens and other parts of the country, posing a mounting health risk according to authorities, particularly amid rising temperatures.
Source: amna-mpa