“Yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister is a personal suggestion by myself and the general secretary Ms. Stratinakis. We are at a solid size, unemployment is falling rapidly. The demand in the labor market is very high and with the measures we are taking we believe that we will be below 10% very soon”, Labor Minister Adonis Georgiadis told SKAI and the show “Kalimera” with George Autias.

“We wanted to give the right to all those who got a job from February 15 and after to build their right to the 10% allowance”, pointed out Mr. Georgiadis, estimating that the law will be voted on by the Parliament at the end of October.

“We will push the button and February 15, 2012 will be January 1, 2024,” he added.

At the same time, the Minister of Labor clarified that “retroactive application cannot be set because the law was then suspended until unemployment falls below 10% in 4 consecutive quarters. We are proceeding with the lifting of the suspension and a little faster” .

He also emphasized that “those who had completed 1-2 years of prior service before February 15 will count towards the three-year allowance. If on February 14, 2012 you had one day for 10%, on January 2, 2024 you are entitled to 10%.”

“The three-year period follows the course of the minimum wage. Where it is provided for in the employees’ contract and increases have been given in the interim, there can be set off by employee-employer agreement. We are unfreezing the three-year period because we want to help those workers who for about 10 years have not seen a single euro increase. Those workers who work for 10 years with the same salary”, noted Mr. Georgiadis.

“The reason we’re moving the three-year unfreeze faster is because we want to get off the bottom of the barrel hundreds of thousands of workers who have been working on the basic wage for over 10 years. The provision will explicitly provide for non-retroactivity because the purpose of a government is to find the balance between a legal request and the economy’s capabilities. If we were to impose a 30% increase in the wages of private employees, half of them would lose their jobs because businesses would collapse.”

Regarding the abolition of the withholding tax on working pensioners, Mr. Georgiadis said that “the Prime Minister was also in favor of this regulation, but also his main adviser on the economy, Alexis Patelis, was a very ardent supporter of this initiative of the Ministry of Labor. I put it first on my agenda when I came to the Department of Labor. The purpose of this provision is to encourage pensioners, who want to work, to be able to do so legally.”