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The insurance funds in Greece are finding themselves in increasingly dire financial straits. Their revenues are decreasing whereas the outstanding contributions are increasing which results in huge deficits, especially in the funds for supplementary insurance.

Although the incomes of pensioners have been cut several times the Greek pension system is still in poor condition. The insurance funds have not been restructured and, according to their employees, this will eventually lead to new cuts in pensions, making the minimum pension of 360 euro as of 1 January 2015 the only guaranteed income.

The trade unions of the employees state that by the end of the year, the supplementary pensions will be cut by at least 30% whereas the basic pensions will be decreased by 10%. It is expected that the funds for supplementary insurance of the banks which are no longer able to pay the pensions determined in the period before the outbreak of the financial crisis will be the first on the list. The fund for supplementary insurance of seafarers will most probably be closed and the remaining funds will have to cut costs to survive for a few more years. Such changes will be made in healthcare and, most probably, the National Organization for Healthcare Provision will take over the majority of the insurance funds.

The unionists’ argument for new cuts in pensions is associated with the increasing deficit in the largest fund for supplementary insurance and of the outstanding contributions as well as with the lack of staff. They state that the implementation of the mobility programme combined with the voluminous legislation is creating major obstacles in the processing of the applications for retirement.

According to the unionists, the option of deferred payment of previous contributions by employers and freelancers has yielded no results, as the majority of them are unable to pay the outstanding amounts due to the financial crisis. They say that 50% of these two categories cannot be included in the system and that, in fact, they have no health insurance. This is true for nearly 55% of those insured in the fund of farmers.

The head of the union of employees in the Social Insurance Organization IKA has announced that on Monday the employees of all insurance funds will go on five-day consecutive strikes in support of their 600 colleagues who have been included in the mobility programme. As pointed out, the outstanding contributions have reached 65% of total contributions. Today this is equivalent to 8.051 billion euro whereas the relevant sum in 2010 was 4.8 billion euro. The deficit in IKA’s revenue has reached 8.214% and the situation has not improved despite the fact that, since the beginning of August, some employers have paid part of their obligations under the option of deferred payment. The unionist states that Greece’s social insurance system is about to fully collapse and that the reason for this is the lack of political will to solve the problem.

At the same time, a piece of research conducted by the company Manpower shows that only 12% of the Greek employers are planning to increase the number of their employees in the last quarter of this year. 69% will not make any changes related to the staff whereas 16% are planning to make cuts.

The results of the research show stabilization of the labour market and they have been the most optimistic from the second quarter of 2010 to date. The situation in northern Greece is the most difficult as the expectations are for a 7- percent drop in appointments there; the results are the most positive in Attica, where it is expected that the employment rate will increase by 3%.

Six out of nine categories of economic employment involved in the research report a decline. It is expected that the employment rate will fall by 6% in tourism and by between 5% and 4% in the sectors related to manufacturing and to electricity, gas and water supply whereas it will increase by about 4% in the financial, insurance and real estate sectors as well as in the sector providing services to business companies.