Galery

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At the end of the year, employees in the Greek public sector will finally say goodbye to the 13th and 14th salary. Along with them, there will be cuts in the salaries of military, lawyers, police officers and other officials from the so-called "special" payroll tables.

The changes will take effect from 1 January 2013 onwards. According to the law, which the Greek Parliament has recently voted, the unified payroll table will apply to workers in public companies too. In this way, they will lose about 25% of their current income and an additional 25% of the amount that exceeds the salary stated in the unified payroll table.

A decision of the Deputy Minister of Finance suspends further cuts in public workers’ salaries, which the introduction of the unified payroll table reduced by 25%.

The heads of municipal and district councils will receive half of their current salaries. The remuneration of the members of municipal councils and various committees formed to participate in the meetings will also be cancelled.

There will be a 50% reduction of the benefits, operating expenses and any additional payments to representatives of public companies, regional governments and companies in which local government authorities hold over 50% of the shares.

The basic salaries of general secretaries in the ministries, governors, deputies, mayors and other high standing persons in the hierarchy will be cut too.

The unified payroll table will apply to all public companies. The reduced salaries will be the basis for the calculations of overtime payment in these enterprises and in other public services.

All collective labour agreements as well as all laws, ministerial decisions, regulations and other administrative decisions, which regulated the payment of specific employees in the past, will be cancelled as of the beginning of January.

Meanwhile, the head of parliament Evangelos Meimarakis has announced new cuts in the budget of the institution some days after its adoption. During a meeting of chairmen, he said that all amounts related to the costs of deputies would be cut by another 25%. This category includes costs of fuel, office equipment, postage and telephone services.

At the same time, the benefits the deputies received for taking part in meetings of commissions will be halved. This means that from now on, they will receive 75 euro per meeting.

The salaries of deputies’ associates will be reduced by 35% instead of the initially planned 40%. Evangelos Meimarakis has also announced that overtime and fuel costs of a larger number of privileged parliamentary employees are expected to be cut as well.