For “alchemies and logical leaps” with which “Mr. Mitsotakis and Mr. Hatzidakis try to convince workers and households that they live in a different reality“, says the New Left in its announcement about the minimum wage.

He comments that “the government attempts with selective and fragmentary reports to justify its provocative celebrations“, while, as he states, Greece is second from the end in the EU, in GDP per capita in terms of purchasing power, real wages in Greece decreased by 9.4%, in the two years 2022-2023, a rate more than double the European average, while corporate profits increased by 9.3% compared to 2021.

The New Left “reminds” the prime minister and the finance minister of the following:

“– Headline inflation between 2021 and 2024 will have risen by around 17%, according to the government’s forecast, while average food inflation between 2021-2023 has already risen by 25% and in the two months of 2024 is “running” at 7.5 %.

– Ordinary households and minimum wage earners spend the vast majority of their income on food, energy and rent, and price increases in these sectors clearly reduce their real income.

– The net increase of 39 euros in the minimum wage does not cover at all the increase in the cost of living.

– Before raising the minimum wage for the first time, the ND kept it frozen from 2019 until January 2022, with painful consequences for workers and their families.

– The ND has dismantled the framework of sectoral collective agreements and Mr. Hatzidakis himself instituted the 10-hour shift with unpaid overtime.

– The monthly employment figures of the EFKA, which stopped being published during his tenure, show in February 2023 the average salary for all private sector workers at 1,038 euros gross – far below what Mr. Hatzidakis cites in his post – and especially for 640,700 part-time workers at 430.8 euros gross».

Following this, the New Left comments that “the out-of-place and out-of-time triumphalisms of the government do not change the reality experienced by the workers”.

He points out that “but deception does not last forever” and adds that “what is required here and now is a radical policy change in a progressive direction: With real wage increases, with wealth taxation and redistribution, with meaningful measures and controls against cartels and of filthy lucre that the Mitsotakis government subsidizes, by imposing legality on the labor market, with Collective Agreements, with a decisive strengthening of the social state».