European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, encouraged social partners and government to work on ways to improve workers’ coverage with collective agreements and praised Cyprus pointing out that “social dialogue is a reality in Cyprus”.
The Commissioner met on Friday with Minister of Labour, Yiannis Panayiotou and social partners, in the presence of the Head of the European Commission Representation in Cyprus, Myrto Zambarta, at the Ministry of Labour, in Nicosia.
In a statement to the Press, afterwards, he congratulated the Cypriot government for introducing a minimum wage and for following with the adaption of minimum wage to the cost of living, and noted that the social partners and the government should now focus on the issue of collective agreements.
‘Cyprus, as many other countries, has seen the level of collective agreements lowering, from more than 60% to around 50%,” he said adding that this is not a good development despite also happening in many other member states.
“We w
ant to encourage social partners in Europe and at a national level, together with governments, to work on ways how this can be improved,” he noted. Because, as he added, “wage setting is back in the hands of the social partners, in collective bargaining.’
The Commissioner expressed his satisfaction regarding the discussion held, describing it as very rich, positive and constructive. ‘I felt that social dialogue is a reality in Cyprus’, he noted, adding that there might be different views, but at the end, people have the readiness to compromise, because, as he said, ‘social dialogue is in some way the art of the compromise’.
Schmit said that this European Commission has been supportive and engaging for a strong social dialogue at all levels. He noted that at a European level a new conference on social dialogue took place this week, with the participation of European social partners, unions, and employers, to reload and strengthen the European dimension of social dialogue, ‘in a period of big changes, big tra
nsformation, where we should take people and companies along’, noting that this also applies to the national level.
On his part, Panayiotou, said that during the meeting, they discussed on the value of social dialogue and the power of the trilateral social cooperation. ‘We exchanged views on the challenges of Europe, on the future of labour and the prospects of the economy’, he said, adding that ‘we agreed that in order to have a strong economy and a cohesive society we need cooperation, dialogue and mutual respect’.
The Minister said that he gifted the Commissioner a first edition of the Industrial Relations Code of Cyprus, describing it as ‘the most important agreement between social partners and our state’.
He noted that labour peace is based for 45 years now on the respect of agreements, adding that “we want to continue like that for as many years, so that we are able to we evolve and develop, but above all to share the fruits of this development fairly; And to be proud throughout Europe that we, Cypri
ots know how to work together to move forward united.’
Source: Cyprus News Agency