The Federation of Building Contractor Associations of Cyprus opposed, for the third time, mediation proposals submitted by the Minister of Labor, sodialistworld.net reported.
Many contractors are exploiting thousands of cheap labor workers in order to destroy working conditions and pay and to crush unions.
Many contractors are sacking workers daily and replacing them with a cheap labor force.
In 2010, the tri-party (Ministry of Labor, trade unions and employers' organizations) started negotiations for a new collective agreement, but talks failed. The bosses ask for cuts which the unions opposed.
The bosses' fired 6,000 workers and then employed 10,000 workers from across Europe, on lower pay and working for longer hours. At first, the bosses tried to justify sacking thousands of Cypriot workers by claiming that the volume of construction work decreased. But according to statistics, the total number of workers in the construction sector was 46,200 in 2008 and now it is 46,000. This shows that Cypriot workers were fired to allow bosses to exploit foreign cheap labor instead.
On 24 January, all the construction workers' unions - the Pancyprian Labor Federation (PEO), the Cyprus Workers' Confederation (SEK) and the Democratic labor Federation of Cyprus (DEOK) - called a strike. At a unions' general assembly, on 25 January, workers were told that the employers were not backing down. Workers then voted to go on an indefinite strike. The industrial action is hitting all construction sites and particularly damaging the big construction companies.
According to press reports, workers demanded the establishment of a committee to oversee whether the bosses follow collective agreements; they called for their trade to be registered and they demanded the implementation of the collective agreement for all construction workers, both Cypriot and foreign.
