K. Mitsotakis: New significant increase of the minimum wage from May 1, 2022

By Dimitris Gatsios

“By the end of the month, the government will announce and implement a new, significant increase in the minimum wage, which will take effect on May 1.”

This was stressed by the Prime Minister from the floor of Parliament, speaking about the bill “Jobs again”. Mr. Mitsotakis, meanwhile, said that the twin goals of government policy are to reduce unemployment and increase wages, noting that the Recovery Fund will channel more than one billion in training activities, which will benefit more than 500,000 citizens. while pointing in the direction of OAED real estate, in order to launch “smart policies to offer cheaper housing”, mainly for young couples.

The Prime Minister, among other things, stressed in his speech:

Unemployment fell to 12.8%. It is the largest de-escalation in all of Europe. More than 200,000 jobs were created and for the first time we surpassed the milestone of four million employees… It is a performance of added importance, if one considers the unfavorable environment in which it was achieved…

-The government of the New Democracy hastened to support first and foremost the world of work, to protect jobs, to support businesses and thus not to interrupt this process of de-escalation of unemployment, which continues in recent months with more higher intensity…

-We made a great effort to support the incomes of households and businesses during the pandemic. We did it by reducing taxes and levies and providing direct financial support… We need an organized pan-European response and we will continue to fight for this in the next summits. At the extraordinary summit at the end of May, where all these issues will be discussed in detail.

– I am well aware of how much the household budget has been burdened… Despite the great difficulties, the government is trying to shield the Greek economy against the imported inflation. With subsidies for electricity, with a discount on fuel, with extraordinary measures, such as the allowance of 200 euros that will be disbursed next week for our weakest fellow citizens…

-The bill takes bold steps in the direction of distinguishing the truly unemployed. Those who need substantial state aid and to do so so that public resources are not wasted horizontally on benefits but are directed towards targeted and specific labor policies…

With unemployment at 12.8%, seven out of ten employers say they find it difficult to get hired because they do not find qualified workers… In competing sectors such as tourism, employers tell us that they have a problem meeting the needs of the workforce itself while the country has an unemployment rate of 12.8% … We will subsidize the training of the unemployed, so that they have a real perspective in terms of returning to the labor market… The bill stipulates that in cooperation with expert advisors each long-term unemployed will prepare his digital action plan because every unemployed person is a special case. These will include the knowledge, but also the training needs, so that he can be included in the corresponding training program… In the meantime he will be rewarded with 300 euros and this support will continue after he finds a job…

-We need to move to a different context, in which education and training providers will be audited by independent certification bodies and their funding should be linked to their effectiveness… They should also be paid on the basis of statistics related to vocational rehabilitation of graduates … More than half of the unemployed who participated in the new training programs found work within the next 12 months. And the important thing is not only to find a job, but also to stay at work… I consider a very important innovation the creation of the individual skills account, which is a tool, in which all the knowledge of an unemployed person and all the certifications will be recorded, so that the employer to know clearly where the candidate can be employed in order to hire him or her in the appropriate position;

-55,000 individuals with an annual income of over 20,000 euros are registered with OAED for one to five years. There are some isolated outrageous cases of so-called beneficiaries who, although they had incomes of 100,000 or 200,000 or 250,000, live in expensive areas, yet maintained the status of unemployed for 10 or even 20 years. Now, clearing the registry will clear the landscape and “yes” will be deleted from the relevant lists of those who remain registered for years without justifying their income image… Those who three times refuse to work in suitable positions found will be deleted especially for them εκεί Those who do not agree to take part in any proposed training action will not have a place in the register λω I want to be clear. Like all Greek citizens, the unemployed have rights, but they also have obligations. And these obligations are not so much to the state. They are primarily for themselves because they also need to mobilize and integrate into the labor market…

-An important cut is another regulation that concerns the utilization of the real estate of the organization… amounting to 1.5 billion euros… Unfortunately in our country despite the high percentages of ownership and home ownership 37% of the population spends more than 40% of its income for housing costs… Launch smarter policies to offer cheaper housing, especially our young couples who are currently struggling significantly in case they do not have access to their own home…

-If low wages are an injustice, exclusion from work is a double injustice… Unemployment is emerging as the first enemy of collective cohesion and social solidarity and that is why we consider employment as the third pillar of growth, along with new investment and boosting income from tax cuts and levies;

-OAED programs will lead to 85,000 new hires in 2022… In June, the work card will be implemented, which will protect employees from employers’ arbitrariness, giving them access to a transparent tool for recording working time and overtime… Top of one billion euros will go from the recovery fund to training activities, which will benefit over 500,000 of our fellow citizens…

-Currently, the twin goal with the reduction of unemployment is the increase of wages, which unfortunately remain in our country at low levels… Here, the political decision alone is not enough. We will do our debt in terms of the minimum wage as a government, but we also need the coexistence of employers individually or often at the sectoral level. And all too often my answer to employers who tell us they can not find employees to hire is that raising wages is the best way to attract more employees to your business… We need a new social contract that will share it fairly wealth we create as a society. With the first beneficiaries the employees, the employees, who can not see the development of the Greek economy simply as a statistical representation that ultimately does not concern their own lives…