While Greece’s public workers find their pay under siege and set to be cut again because of a new round of austerity measures demanded by international lenders, some 400,000 employees working for private companies were not paid at least three months’ worth of wages last year, according to a former official of the state Labor Inspectorate.
In an interview broadcast on SKAI TV, Michalis Halaris, the former special secretary of the inspectorate, which operates under the auspices of the Labor, Social Insurance and Welfare Ministry, said that 67 percent of all complaints received by his department in 2011 related to the nonpayment of salaries to workers. Last year, around 120,000 companies withheld salaries corresponding to three months of work or more from 400,000 employees, Halaris said.
With a recession, now in its fifth year, set to deepen as the coalition government led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is set to impose another wave of pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions, and thousands more businesses set to close, private sector workers are also expected to feel the ripple effect, and many have already slashed their workers’ pay to levels comparable with the reductions in the private sector. The government has also lowered the minimum wage to $729 a month, or $182.25 a week, before taxes.
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