GSEE, ADEDY say no to Friday dialogue on ailing pension fund
Greece’s efforts to forge a common consensus on social security reforms received a setback yesterday when the country’s biggest trade union organization and the civil servants’ union rejected the government’s invitation to a dialogue on Friday on funding for the ailing pension fund. GSEE, the umbrella trade union body, said it would not accept an invitation from Economy and Finance Minister Nikos Christodoulakis for a meeting on Friday to discuss the financial resources for propping up the social security system. It said the GSEE executive committee would meet on April 4 to examine «the impasse» in the collective wage agreement and the social security issue. Until then, it would not meet with the minister, neither today nor on Friday. ADEDY, in turn, is considering strike action in early April to highlight its dissatisfaction with Labor Minister Dimitris Reppas’s social security proposals. Christodoulakis’s open invitation was also directed at the industrialists, small businesses, traders and the Social Security Fund (IKA). In his open letter, the minister said the financial framework for the social security fund will be finalized by the end of April. A week earlier, he had said the government was ready to inject 1.26 billion euros into IKA, part of which constitutes its contribution to the tripartite funding of the system this year and next. The other part was to form the basis of a reserve fund for IKA to cover future liabilities. The figure was substantially lower than what trade unions had requested.
