The 24-hour strike of the temporary employees at the Ministry of Culture continues second week in a row. Yesterday permanent employees joined their colleagues to support them and closed major museums and archeological sites in the country till 12’oclock at noon. The strike involved archaeologists, restorers, technicians, security guards, receptionists and labourers.
The employees of the ministry face with redundancies, lack of funding and lack of staff. "Currently the administration experiences serious difficulties because many employees were retired after the adoption of the new social security law and secondly because of the lack of staff to work on programs under the National Strategic Framework," said Despina Kutsumba, archeologist and member of the administrative council of the Staff Federation at the Ministry of Culture and member of the general council of civil servants trade union ADEDY.
Delay in recruitment of staff
According to her, the problem is that the Ministry does not appoint employees even though 194 guards and 55 archaeologists and restorers were approved in 2009 to be employed permanently. They are still waiting their appointments. While they are waiting to sign their contracts, the Ministry employs temporary people who are fired within few months!
350 people out of work at the end of the month
The second reason for the strike is that the temporary contracts of 350 employees who have been working for the Ministry between 15 and 18 years expire on October 31 and they no longer will be entitled to work as civil servants in Greek culture preservation. Most of these 350 people are guards of museums and archaeological sites. This will affect the opening hours of the archaeological sites such as the Acropolis, which will have to work until 3:00 pm and not to 6 pm.
"The employees who will be fired are aged between 45 and 50 years and a competition for their job positions is already announced. They have no chance on the labour market but the sites themselves will also loose because their experience is invaluable," said Lena Panu who is a guard at the National Archaeological Museum, the mother of two children and is waiting to be dismissed at the end of the month. She belongs to another group of employees - those who have won the last year’s competition but have not yet been appointed, so she is still hoping ...
24 months of work and then – new occupation
The third issue is the 24 months term which the Pavlopoulos presidential provision introduced in 2004. The provision has integrated the European directive according to which the employee must be permanently appointed after 24 months of service but the provision was misinterpreted, i.e. no one can work more than 24 months. "This means that we employ archaeologists, restorers, guards, we train them to do the job, they sign three eight-month temporary contracts and then they are not allowed to take the same position," explained Ms. Kutsumba. "Or an archaeologist is doing research in a museum for an exhibition, do all the work and then, after 24 months, we have to fire this archeologist and employ another one. This is a serious social problem, because archaeologists and restorers can not work elsewhere but only at the Ministry of Culture. In practice, they study at least four years to work two years. They work as cleaners, guards. This is a problem for us, for the activities of the Ministry and especially for the programs in the national strategic framework, because they require specialization and it is a big problem if we have to change our personnel in every two years," adds the archaeologist. According to Mrs. Kutsumba, the problem is most serious in the remote areas of the country where there is huge unemployment.
Fast track and archaeological woes
The main demand of the staff of the Ministry of Culture is not to undermine the level through fast track laws or through the Ministry's attempts to convince people that cultural heritage is only a hobby for the rich or is tourism-oriented, says Despina Kutsumba. She also explained that policy in this case means to pay attention only to major museums and cultural sites while leaving the rest to their fate or looking at them as an obstacle to development.
Under fast track and the second memorandum signed, the Ministry of Culture wants to skip the permission issuance by the archaeological department to facilitate the entry of large investments over a certain amount that will open jobs for more than 200 people (but not permanent jobs), said Ms. Kutsumba. "In fact, the archaeological department puts obstacles on projects that do not lead to development, but are made to take the subsidies to vanish. There are investments that will leave behind damaged environment and unpaid staff although they seem significant... It happens very often – businessmen come and offer us projects that are useless and have no future but there is a subsidy and they want to get it leaving a dump behind. They do not care, but we are civil service and can not think on the basis of private interests," the archaeologist reveals the problem.
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