By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

About 1 million workers are affected by the three-year unfreezing measure announced – in a surprise move – by the Prime Minister from the TIF platform according to the first unofficial calculations of the Ministry of Labour. Workers with whom spoke lowered the bar between 600,000-800,000. In any case, the measure concerns workers in the private sector who:

They are paid minimum wage

They are paid under active Collective Bargaining Agreements that provide for seniority benefits which were also frozen
Such benefits are the annual increase in the contract of hotel staff and bank employees, the three-year increase in waiters and the multi-year increase in the rest of the specialties of the hospitality industry. Note here that by seniority we do not mean working for the same employer but working time in general for those who are paid the minimum wage and years of work in the same industry if they are paid with sectoral contracts.

With the three-year unfreeze it is as if time restarted from February 2012 and nothing happened in the intervening 11 years and there is no retroactivity.

For old employees – before 14/2/2012 – the previous service before February 2012 is counted towards the three-year construction. If an employee had completed 8 years and 11 months, at the end of January he will see his salary increase by 30% – since every three years the salary increases by 10%.

New employees – after 2/14/2012- start from the new year of 2024 to build their three years, therefore in 2027 they will be paid the first.

Based on the minimum wage:

1 three years leads to earnings of €780 +10% = €856

2 three years lead to earnings of €780 +20% = €936

3 three years which is the maximum lead to earnings of €780+30% = €1014

It goes without saying that from April when we will have a new increase in the minimum wage, all these increases will be calculated based on this new minimum wage.

In cases where the employee is already paid more than what the new regime stipulates at the time the employer will have the right to offset the increase.

According to the current planning of the Ministry of Labor, the relevant regulation will be introduced tomorrow in Parliament with the aim of being a law of the state on September 28-29 so that the market has sufficient time to adjust to the new data that is created.