By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

Although understaffed – its organizational chart foresees 909 permanent staff positions and an additional 83 permanent staff positions – the Labour Inspection has drawn up a very ambitious plan of checks across the territory. According to the decision signed by Labor Minister Kostis Hatzidakis and published in the Official Gazette, the plan foresees 66,000 checks throughout Greece. This number is the minimum, while the decision stipulates that it can be revised within the year.

39,400 checks will have as a priority the fight against undeclared work and the detection of delinquencies in the employment relationship. The targets of the labor inspectorate are mainly:

-Businesses and sectors with a high risk of delinquency

-Businesses that have not been audited in the last three years

-Businesses that operate in a seasonal cycle

-Companies in which the digital work card system is applied.

Numerically, emphasis will be placed on Central Macedonia with 6,920 controls, Athens with 4,830, Central Greece with 4,200 and Epirus and Central Macedonia with 3,780. These 4 regions gather almost half of the checks in this category.

26,600 checks are foreseen with the aim of preventing and dealing with delinquency in the field of health and safety at work. Here the emphasis will be mainly on:

-In companies that belong to the high-risk categories and mainly in those active in the construction, technical works and building sector and the local authorities. The aim is to increase such checks by 20%.

-In businesses that have not been audited in the last three years

-In businesses whose object is storage as well as transport.

6,900 checks are planned to be carried out in Macedonia/Thrace, 6,250 in Athens/Eastern Attica/Crete and 5,000 in Piraeus/Eastern Attica/Aegean.

This barrage of checks will not be carried out blindly, but the labor inspectors will work based on analyzes and risk criteria, while the …Teresias will be used, which has been created and includes the black list of companies that have been “caught” in previous checks years to be illegal.

According to the decision, the determination of the number of controls to be carried out in each region will be based on the following main factors:

-The number of inspectors in each address

-The amount of administrative work that accompanies each audit project

-The workload as the inspectors, in addition to the control, are charged with other tasks such as the investigation of labor disputes, the investigation of occupational accidents and their participation in collective administrative bodies.

The labor inspection, as every year in the period before Easter, has also been put on alert in order to check the complaints which -unfortunately- are also traditionally made and have to do with the (non)payment of the Easter gift which must be paid by M. Wednesday, April 12.