.
They came, they saw (they conquered) and left. But just as they opened the Pandora’s Box of all the ills of Cyprus, stacked up over the years, the Troikans were scared of dealing with the trade unions.
How else can anyone explain the fact that despite the forceful merger of Popular Laiki into Bank of Cyprus and the radical uprooting of the Coop banks, the international lenders did not dare to look into the financials of the trade unions and their secret books of assets.
Was it that the solidarity the Cypriots had been expecting from fellow EU members finally came in the form of a cover up of the union books? After all, the Troika inspectors needed the cooperation of the civil servants in order to ensure they got the right data to be able to push through with the audit of public finances. They also needed a better understanding of the working of the public sector and semi-government organisations in order to conclude that reforms are a must and that privatisations need to take place as soon as possible.
In other words, just as politicians and past administrations have pampered to the trade unions, in particular the civil service’s Pasidy, the Troikans, too, seem to have succumbed to the strong-arm tactics of union bosses. A necessary evil, one might think.
But that will hopefully change as lower-ranked government workers now have to undertake twice the burden they were used to in the past, due to the early retirement and non-replacement of senior officers. Many are annoyed that they cannot clock in overtime, even if extra hours were needed to supply the Troikans with much-needed data.
A sense of hostility and jealousy exists among junior level civil servants, who do not care less if their work is completed on time or not, despite the administration’s commitment for a leaner, efficient and productive government machine.
Many are turning informants by necessity, despite the law for whistle-blowers dragging its feet through parliament. Rivalry will continue to grow between the private sector and civil servants as more and more will abandon their unions which will eventually become obsolete unable to argue for collective labour agreements, or fight against pay reductions or even oppose job cuts. In effect, unions will have to struggle to hold on to membership as contributions will continue to dwindle.
In the meantime, the Troikans have not looked into the vast properties that the unions own, and how these were amassed over the years, ranging from holiday homes to beach-side hotel apartments, supposedly distributed evenly among all members (of a certain rank and above…).
Will the government demand that unions return any of these properties and assets or will unions do it of their own accord when they realise that they will have to pay higher property taxes as of 2014? Then again, will the union assets be exempt?
And finally, what about the secretive welfare funds that no one seems to be able to track down, apart from the union bosses who probably use such accounts for their own benefit or as slush funds. Unless, of course, they too were hit by deposits in Laiki, but surely, a lot of these amounts were deposited in their own Coops.
If the Troikans did not have the guts to investigate these vast fortunes, let’s see if this administration will dare to do anything.
