By A. Tsimplakis
[email protected]
The Cosco-managed Piraeus Port Authority, which operates Greece’s biggest and busiest port, has reportedly agreed, in principle, with union locals representing workers over a new general labor code, aimed at liberalizing the decades-old regime that existed at the facility under a state-run administration.
The new contract, which has 21 articles, defines the rights and obligations of both sides, and fulfils the Chinese shipping giant’s oft-repeated intention of making the port of Piraeus more competitive and efficient through a more flexible work schedule, such as instituting a flat eight-hour shift with overtime paid thereafter. The port’s organizational chart is also revised and updated, while the manner in which individual work contracts are terminated also changes.
Another new reform – at least as far as Greece’s cavernous public sector is concerned – is an evaluation process for workers and management.
Agreeing over a new labor code is considered as an imperative before the port authority’s new management and unions start substantive negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement, which has a September deadline for concluding.
One of the highlights of the new work regime (article 13) refers to seven-day-a-week schedule at the port, with workers on a five-day alternating schedule. Weekends and holidays are not considered as eligible for overtime pay if a shift is part of a worker’s five-day schedule.
The sale of a majority stake of the Piraeus Port Authority, along with its management, was a landmark privatization in the country during the last seven to eight years of economic crisis.
