Authoritarianism masking incompetence? The case of the Republic of Cyprus

Article published in Open Democracy

Authoritarianism, left unchecked to shape the public discourse, can self-propel and legitimise itself, diverting the blame for a degraded public health system from the state onto society.

Gregoris Ioannou

At the end of February, as the Covid-19 crisis developed in Europe, governments began to adopt measures which evolved by March into various sorts of lock-down aiming to impose physical distancing between individuals. In a context in which, after decades of neoliberal policies, underfunding and privatisation, national public health systems lacked the capacity to cope with the surge of demand provoked by the global pandemic, lock-downs were deemed essential.

At the same time as a substantial part of economic activity was suspended, governments pledged to support workers who had to abstain from work and businesses that had to shut, including the announcement of several social policy and temporary tax relief measures. Where adopted, lock-down measures typically included the prohibition of congregations and restriction of non-essential travel, granting enhanced powers to the police to enforce this where needed. The executive authority meanwhile assumed more powers, ostensibly to upgrade health care capacities and deal with the economic consequences mostly via executive decrees instead of proper legislation.

This is as far as the generalisation can go. When one gets into the specifics of each European state, significant divergences emerge not only with respect to the timing, the scope and the details of the measures adopted but also with respect to their focus, their direction and their logic or absence thereof. While for example some, such as the centre-left coalition government in Spain, have brought private hospitals under state control, others, such as the right-wing government in Greece, paid private hospitals premium money to use their facilities. Whereas the centre-left government in Portugal decided to give to all migrants and asylum seekers temporary citizen rights in order to automatically incorporate them into the social security and health care systems, in Bulgaria the army which was given police powers by the conservative government , set up checkpoints outside Roma neighbourhoods to control their movement.

While in some countries the emergency measures were assigned a fixed term of weeks or months, in others this was left open for review at an unspecified date in the future. Although violating civil liberties in unprecedented ways in peace-time democracy, in most cases these regulations were instituted “legally”, voted in by parliaments and following the stipulated constitutional procedures. In some east and south European states however, such niceties were deemed unaffordable luxuries in times of crisis.

An absent EU

The EU so far has been largely absent from the whole crisis management operation and only came to post facto accept or turn a blind eye to the initiatives taken by the nation-states even when these violated treaties, principles, rules and regulations. A lot has been said about the economic consequences of the lock-down measures and on the sealing of national borders. A lot of speculation is also being expressed about the magnitude of the debt crisis looming ahead and the future of the Eurozone and the EU amidst resurgent divisions and polarisation among member-states. There is less discussion on the authoritarian drift observed and what there is tends to focus on eastern Europe, which already manifested authoritarian trends before the Covid-19 crisis. Hungary is the most cited example where Orban’s government secured the power to rule by decree without parliamentary scrutiny, and restrict free speech without an end date.

The public health system

The authoritarian measures of movement restriction are justified through a discourse of “science”, with lock-down presented as the implementation of physical distancing. While the example of China and the recommendations of the World Health Organisation (WHO) are cited by European states for this, most of them underplay or ignore the other half of the story: the rapid and massive diversion of resources into the public health system undertaken by China and the widespread testing of the population.

As the WHO tirelessly insists, “lock-down on its own cannot solve the problem”, it seems that at least some European states are using authoritarian measures of population control as a substitute for the needed upscaling of public health system capacity. Through the enhanced “legitimacy” assumed as a result of the fear that has overtaken wide sections of society and through their friendly media some governments are able to frame the public health crisis as a public security crisis, invoking war imagery and discourse that shifts public debate and the public attention from state failures to “disobedient” individual citizens who need disciplining through ever-escalating collective punitive measures. The Republic of Cyprus is one of the most extreme examples of this in Europe and deserves to be more closely examined.

Authoritarian Cyprus

As Covid-19 began to spread in Europe in February, the Cyprus government initially ignored it taking no measures at all with respect to its busy airports and making no attempt to boost the capacity of its newly instituted NHS system (GESY) and its already crumbling public hospitals.

At the end of the month it surprised everybody by unilaterally closing 4 of the 7 crossings under its control to the northern part of the country in a nationalist and populist move, alleging that the threat to public health came from the Turkish Cypriot community, provoking the reaction of the peace and reunification movement and shifting public attention away from public health to the politics of Cyprus’ division.

Soon the nationalist political authorities in the Turkish Cypriot community responded to the Greek Cypriot nationalist challenge by closing different additional crossings. When the first case of Covid-19 appeared in the island contracted by UK and German travellers, on the same day in the south and north respectively, all the crossings between the two parts of Cyprus were blocked. Ignoring the calls of the peace movement for cooperation and coordination between the two sides to combat the spread of the virus, the Republic of Cyprus oriented itself towards Greece instead which it emulated using even identical phraseology in the instituting of lock-down measures. The Republic of Cyprus’ measures, however, soon came to surpass those of Greece in severity, disproportionality as well as irrationality.

Not only did the Republic of Cyprus completely prohibit entry into Cyprus to visitors from anywhere, it was also the only state in the world to block its own citizens who found themselves abroad and in need of returning. After leaving thousands of citizens stranded abroad for a week and after the public outcry this provoked, it allowed some of them who were temporarily abroad to return and placed them in precautionary quarantine for 14 days, claiming that this would be extended for some other categories of Cypriots such as workers and students in the future.

Besides closing-down non-essential industries, it also closed public parks and made it illegal for everybody to leave their home without an “essential reason”. Eight such “essential reasons” were listed in a print form, from which everybody had to tick one and sign, specifying the time and presenting it to the increased police patrols which were supplemented by army personnel.

On March 30, further restrictions were imposed, making a prior permit issued by the police via its reply to the SMS application obligatory to every person under 65 years old while only 1 exit from one’s domicile per day was allowed and none between 21.00-6.00. A maximum of 3 persons per car was instituted and more alarmingly it was announced that the police would check homes to see if there were persons inside there other than the home residents. After the public outcry that this provoked, the government retreated clarifying that this would only be done either with consent or a court warrant.

No mere incompetence

While incompetence can take us some way in accounting for the rushed, disproportionate and irrational measures adopted by Anastasiades’ government, the picture cannot be completed unless the chronic inefficiency of the Republic of Cyprus as a state is accounted for as well, and the condition of its public health system more specifically.

While in 1990 there was one hospital bed per 170 persons, in 2017 the underfunding of health led this to shrink to one bed per 290 persons. With an EU average of 541 hospital beds per 100 000 residents, Cyprus has 339. Long-term health care expenditure in many EU countries surpasses 20% of their total health spending, while in Cyprus the equivalent figure is 3%. At an EU average of total health spending of 10% of GDP, in Cyprus this stands at merely 6.8%.

Covid-19 found the Cyprus health system totally unprepared, lacking intensive care units and critical care physicians, lacking equipment and even protective equipment and disposables. In the first week, three of the country’s five main public hospitals had to close entire sections as numerous health professionals became infected with Covid-19, testing was limited to only a few hundred per day until the end of March and there was no new hiring of health professionals to staff the already understaffed hospitals. The government restricted itself to the use of medical and nursing students and no significant effort was made to divert funds to public health.

Instead it immersed itself in a fully-fledged public relations battle with ministers constantly accusing “irresponsible” citizens and threatening yet further, more severe measures in its attempt to communicate an image of strength and decisiveness.

This image, besides shielding it from being held accountable for the sorry state of the public health system, also constructs a public enemy discourse which operates as a justification for its authoritarian drift. The Attorney General and the Head of the Law Association, while indirectly admitting when asked that the legal and constitutional basis for these governmental decrees in the absence of a formal declaration of a “state of emergency” is at best questionable, at the same time attempted to silence objections and postpone such constitutionality discussions for a future time “when there will be the luxury of time to make safe judgements”.

“We are on duty. You are in the house. We are breaking the transmission chain of Covid-19. #We stay at home” | Screenshot: Twitter: official account of the Cyprus Police, March 30, 2020.
This is a screen shot of the official twitter account of Cyprus Police on 30/3/2020 after the stricter lock-down measures were announced by the government. It was removed 3 hours later after a public outcry on social media. It was also discovered that the drawing was copied from another pre-existing graphic signed by ‘Miss Matured’ without attributing credit and thus possibly also infringing copyright law.

It is in such a context that the Minister of Interior of the Republic of Cyprus stated on television that “time will tell whether such measures are legal or not” and that the government establishes “new administrative structures and measures that are at the frontier of the law”. It is in such a context that the Police of Cyprus published the unacceptable image above in its March 30 tweet which in all its crudeness illustrates quite aptly how it imagines its role.

Although there has been some reaction to the police-state image communicated by the government, forcing it to a retreat, at least at the rhetorical level it remains to be seen whether the progressive section of society and the parliamentary opposition parties will continue to more or less tolerate the authoritarian drift operating as a cover for incompetence and public health system degradation or whether they will stand up to it, set limits to governmental arbitrariness, and hold it to account.

Returning to the bigger European picture, although Cyprus might be an extreme case, it does raise wider issues as to how authoritarianism may mask institutional failures diverting resources and attention from public health into police operations and substituting citizen for government responsibility. More importantly if authoritarianism is left unchecked to shape the public discourse, it can self-propel and legitimise itself, diverting the blame from the state onto society.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/authoritarianism-masking-incompetence-case-republic-cyprus/?fbclid=IwAR3l6SZzUIcXU--gQ3ZNuM-zWLST1rbHLFu9klpB7R9CTsTBgErYEQPIMm0

Social Dialogue: International best practices and Recommendations for united Cyprus

Social Dialogue: International best practices and Recommendations for united Cyprus

Gregoris Ioannou

[commissioned study for Cyprus Dialogue Forum] 

1. Introduction:

Social Dialogue has been a key achievement of humanity and as a practice has now almost one Century of history in the developed world. It is a central concept both in the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda and the EU’s social model but has faced considerable strains during the economic crisis and is in need to modernize and develop further, finding the best possible mechanisms, processes and contexts in which it can be conducted. However, above all for social dialogue practices to have meaning and effect, “serious political commitment and sustained collaborative effort” is needed. There is a wide diversity of national social dialogue institutions in EU countries and there is no ideal model and “one size fits all” as these reflect historical traditions, and socio-political and economic circumstances that shape national contexts (Guardiancich and Molina [eds.], 2017).

Based on the current existing social dialogue practices in the GCC and TCC and the environment in which social dialogue takes place as outlined in the two relevant CDF Reports, this Report aims to briefly examine selected alternative forms of social dialogue operating in other countries and a) identify those international best practices that could more efficiently and effectively be adopted or that could inform a united Cyprus context and  b) suggest the steps that need to be taken for this direction. The benefits, difficulties, prerequisites and implications in this endeavor are discussed and c) the Recommendations are summed up and specified along with some concluding remarks. The international examples selected are drawn primarily from EU countries and rely on the most recent research conducted by the ILO and by Eurofound on behalf of the European Commission and the recommendations made after the study of social dialogue in the conditions of the economic crisis.

      2. Social dialogue international best practices:

Social dialogue contexts and processes differ across countries as there is a variety of industrial relations models (Eurofound, 2018a). Social dialogue occurs in a bi-partite form alongside and connected to collective bargaining, but more often in a tripartite form involving both general and specific issues (ILO, 2017). It also operates at different levels – usually national and sectoral but also sometimes at a regional and at an enterprise level. The degree of its institutionalization, frequency of meetings, scope and depth of consultation processes and actual impact on policy making varies across countries but overall it can be said that the main tripartite social dialogue bodies have an advisory role with the governments maintaining the leading role.

Although social dialogue has been generally weakened during the crisis in various ways, or has been unable in many countries to play a substantial role in crisis management there are European examples where in fact social dialogue has been strengthened during the recent economic crisis. These are France, Germany, Netherlands, Slovakia and Sweden (ILO, 2018). Germany and Sweden do not have a tradition of statutory tripartism but have instead fairly elaborate bi-partite social dialogue bodies and extensive collective bargaining. In 2014 Germany has instituted a Minimum Wage Commission authorized to decide on increases in the minimum wage every two years. This commission is chaired by an appointment of the Federal Labour Minister and composed by trade union and employer representatives and academic experts for a five year term. In Germany, in addition to the formal channels, informal, ad hoc meetings of the social partners took place in order to deal with the emergency situation arising from the crisis. These “crisis summits” called by the state and involving several relevant federal ministries, were used to present and discuss the social partners’ views on appropriate crisis responses, started before the crisis and continued after it (Lesch and Vogel, 2017). Ad hoc, non formalized social dialogue in Germany has been very effective in providing responses to the crisis such as negotiating reduced working time to avoid layoffs (ILO, 2018).

France at the other extreme end has a tradition of an active role of the state and intervention through extension mechanisms in collective bargaining and legislative tools. In 2007 France has enacted a new law granting the social partners consultation rights “in relation to any government project or prior to any draft bill on reforms in the area of labour relations, employment or vocational training” (Karnite, 2016). Although consultation rights do not necessarily translate into substantive deliberation, it did lead into more frequent meetings and discussions, strengthening the form and process of social dialogue (Freyssinet, 2017). Effectively this has institutionalized an already occurring phenomenon, boosting it symbolically through its legal consolidation.

Unlike in many EU countries, in Slovakia anti-crisis measures were first discussed at the country’s Economic and Social Council before being adopted (Eurofound, 2018a). In addition the “tripartite plus” Council for the Economic Crisis was established in 2009 playing a leading role in the formulation of the Government’s response to the crisis replaced in 2012 by the Council of Solidarity and Development (Cziria, 2017). Good and early planning and professional preparation of the meetings was important in addition to the political commitment not to interrupt and even strengthen further the social dialogue process during the crisis period. Another good practice in Slovakia, which has experimented with the consecutive establishment of various peak level tripartite bodies in the last two decades in search of efficiency and according to political dynamics, is the publication of the minutes and the holding of press conference after national level social dialogue meetings (Cziria, 2017).

In the Netherlands, although trade unions were weakened through rising labour market flexibility and falling trade union density undermining their legitimacy in social dialogue, there was no rupture with past and the Polder Model which has social dialogue at the heart of labour relations and social policy has survived. The Dutch social partners have reached agreements during and after the crisis on issues such as “wages; social and employment policies (including implementation of EU Directives); industrial relations and labour law, including collective bargaining practice and procedures; and anti-crisis measures on competitiveness and productivity” (Dekkers, Bekker and Cremmers, 2017). Also employers and trade unions have recently accepted one seat less for each, allowing two organizations representing the self-employed to also be represented in the Social and Economic Council, the supreme tripartite body of Netherlands (Dekkers, Bekker and Cremmers, 2017).

The participation of the social partners in the EU Semester can also be considered as an international best practice, at least at the level of intention for EU policy makers. Although in many instances more formal than substantive and still lagging behind the more elaborate and comprehensive social dialogue mechanisms and procedures at national level of most EU member states, it has the potential to systematize and perhaps revitalize social dialogue practices in EU member states, especially in those states where the crisis undermined or marginalized it almost pushing it out of existence. Although the emphasis so far has been procedural (Eurofound 2017) emphasis has been shifting to social partner capacity building (Weber and Pavlovaite, 2018; Eurofound , 2018b) which is expected to be the central dimension in the next years (Eurofound, 2019 forthcoming).   

        3. Adapting suitable social dialogue examples and suggestions for directions in a united Cyprus context:

Although the positive contribution that social dialogue can have on the economy and society is recognized in both communities of Cyprus and there is already significant institutionalization of social dialogue mechanisms and processes in both sides, there are substantial imbalances and weaknesses, especially in the TCC (Sonan, 2018). Unlike the Republic of Cyprus which has ratified the ILO Convention on Tripartite Consultation (International Labour Standards) 144 (1976) in 1977 and operates since then a full-fledged tripartite system, the Turkish Cypriot Community has a much simpler and less comprehensive system in place. In the GCC, although a more elaborate system is in place this has been weakened during the crisis and although some improvement took place in the last years, social dialogue has not returned to the pre crisis levels in terms of depth and substance. Moreover the changing environment in the labour market already in place and the much bigger challenges that will inevitably escort the reunification process, point to the direction of reform and strengthening of the social dialogue context in general.

Given that labour law and labour and social policy will need to be unified in principle and operate at the level of the federal state a series of measures will have to be adopted in order to facilitate the transition to the united Cyprus context and maintain the social dialogue environment at the optimum level. Building strong social dialogue mechanisms that can oversee the reunification process is necessary in order to deal swiftly with the problems in the labour market and possible negative socio-economic developments that may arise. If a well functioning bi-communal, social partner consultation system is established from day 1, the transition can be achieved smoothly and this will also increase stability, the sense of security and social ownership of the reunification process[1].

Steps need to be taken in three directions:
 A) Strengthening of the legal framework of social dialogue.

Making consultation a legal right of the social partners and an obligation of the state will contribute to the systematization of discussions and the development of a social dialogue culture in a United Cyprus. Especially since a new political order will be in the process of construction after an agreement is ratified, the establishment by federal law of a series of tripartite bodies (see below) can both, place social dialogue on a stable footing especially in the transitional period, and allow ownership of the reunification process assisting in its social legitimization. In the medium term, establishing a comprehensive, well structured tripartite system will contribute to the democratization process and effective and socially balanced decision making and law making on labour, social and economic policy.

B) Enhancing the autonomy, representativeness and strength of social partners.

This requires an active concerted effort by the state and the social partners that needs to take various forms. First of all it requires the political commitment of the political leaderships that the social partners will be a pillar of the reunification process and that tripartite social dialogue will be at the heart of the united Cyprus project. From this, it follows that measures, which so far have not been considered, will be adopted in order to build a new effective consultation system. This would involve legislative reforms and administrative practices in order to protect unionization, especially in the Turkish Cypriot Community’s private sector including stricter inspections and better enforcement of existing laws with zero tolerance to anti-unionization practices by some employers. It will also need to involve changes in the institutional framework in order to improve the balance of power between the two sides in specific industries and measures to combat the fragmentation of the social partners. On the organizational side, and under the leadership of the social partners themselves, the aim should be the increase in social partners’ membership density and representativeness and enhancement of expertise and capacity of involvement in collective bargaining and social dialogue more generally.  

         C) Smooth operation of the labour market and harmonization and unification of social insurance systems.

Pre-emptive measures need to be adopted to prevent social dumping, observation mechanisms need to be instituted to inform the social dialogue bodies (regular as well as emergency ones) about possible interventions to be made as issues arise and a standing committee including experts should take over the planning of the merge of the social insurance systems in the medium term. The pre-emptive measures could involve the institutionalization of a national (federal) minimum wage and basic employment benefits that would protect the most vulnerable segment of the labour force. Beyond reducing work inequalities and allowing decent conditions in non unionized sectors, a “minimum wage and basic benefits package” can also serve as the starting point from where trade unions and employers can collectively bargain at sectoral or enterprise level better deals and more elaborate employment terms where the balance of power between the two sides allows it. In this way protective legislation will complement collective bargaining procedures. Measures are also needed in order to follow the situation in the labour market as it evolves and steps should be taken for the gradual unification of social insurance.

4. Specifying the Recommendations:

-          Establishment of a “Labour and Social Policy Council” by means of federal legislation (that will replace the Labour Consultative Assembly of the RoC and the Social and Economic Council in the Turkish Cypriot Community). Using federal legislation in order to set this peak tripartite body has both a practical and a symbolic function. On the one hand, assigning a statutory status to social dialogue and proclaiming to all that the state of United Cyprus is oriented towards the logic of social partnership. This peak tripartite body should be convened regularly (2 or 3 times per year) as well as additionally on extraordinary or emergency occasions when the government decides so. The main trade unions and employers’ organizations from both communities should be represented at the highest level and from the state’s side the Minister of Labour heading the meetings should be accompanied by high ranking competent civil servants. This body should operate as the main vehicle for social dialogue on general issues of labour and social policy and legislation at the top level. Although the government will have a leading role, the social parties should also have the right to jointly determine the agenda.

-          Establishment of the United Cyprus Committee of Employment, with a special focus on issues of combating unemployment, promoting training and more broadly overseeing the smooth operation of the labour market. Beyond employment issues, this could also be the body in which labour relations issues are discussed and common statements, campaigns and agreements decided as to how a more balanced labour market institutional framework could be promoted, representativeness enhanced, trust between social partners built and problems with inadequate compliance with standards set in collective agreements dealt with.   

-          Establishment of a Minimum Wage and Basic Employment Benefits Commission. This can follow the German model outlined above with the appointment of academic experts in addition to the social partner representatives and have a fixed term of service and a regular bi-annual review of the national minimum wage. The benefit from the establishment of such body is both substantive and procedural. The institutionalization of a national minimum wage and basic employment benefits will offer a minimum protection net for the weaker in the labour market and prevent social dumping that may appear amidst the capital movements during the transitional period. At the procedural level, the 5 year term appointments of social partners’ representatives and academic experts is expected to allow the development of mutual understanding, in-depth exchange of views and placing discussions on a scientific basis resulting in a consensual or at least majority decision on the bi-annual review.

  

-          Establishment of a Coordinating Committee for the convergence and unification of the Social Insurance Systems. This will need to be also tripartite in spirit but should involve experts as well, while functionaries from the two social insurance systems of the constituent states will also need to be part of it. Its aim will be the systematic study of the factors and parameters affecting the convergence and unification of social insurance, devise plans and scenarios, discuss problems and solutions and mediate between the federal government and the government of the two constituent states.

 5. Concluding remarks:

The international examples chosen and suggestions made above are of course indicative and briefly outlined and aim to serve the opening of the discussion between the social partners in the two communities in Cyprus. Successful practices abroad can only inform possible practices in Cyprus and cannot offer any detailed blueprints.  As stated in the introduction, the examples are drawn from EU countries, in which Cyprus belongs and in which social dialogue is most advanced. The recent economic crisis and the strains it placed on social dialogue constitutes a background upon which the different institutional arrangements can be evaluated in terms of their resilience.

Through the review of the most recent trends and the paths chosen by different countries in response to the crisis with respect to tripartism, some general directions, given the current actual state of affairs and the prevailing normative positions at the level of declarations by both the EU and the ILO, are suggested. These directions are specified with concrete recommendations about the establishment of structures and mechanisms that will enable social dialogue escort, condition, shape and influence the transition from a divided to a united Cyprus minimizing risks and maximizing social and political benefits.

References:

Cziria, L. (2017) Sustaining social dialogue though the crisis: The Slovakian experience, in Guardiancich, I. and Molina, O. (eds.) Talking through the crisis: Social dialogue and industrial relations trends in selected EU countries, ILO, Geneva

Dekker, R., Bekkers, S. and Cremers, J. (2017) The Dutch polder model: Resilience in times of crisis, in Guardiancich, I. and Molina, O. (eds.) Talking through the crisis: Social dialogue and industrial relations trends in selected EU countries, ILO, Geneva.

Guardiancich, I. and Molina, O. (eds.) (2017) Talking through the crisis: Social dialogue and industrial relations trends in selected EU countries, ILO, Geneva.

Eurofound. (2017) Involvement of the national social partners in the European Semester: 2016 update, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.

Eurofound. (2018a) Country profiles.

Eurofound. (2018b) Involvement of the national social partners in the European Semester 2017: Social dialogue practices, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.

Eurofound (2019 forthcoming) Exploring how to support capacity building for effective social dialogue

Freyssinet, J. (2017) Social dialogue in the shadow of the State in France, in Guardiancich, I. and Molina, O. (eds.) Talking through the crisis: Social dialogue and industrial relations trends in selected EU countries, ILO, Geneva.

ILO (2017) Voice matters: Consultation (Industrial and National Levels) Recommendation, 1960 (No. 113), ILO, Geneva.

ILO. (2018) Social dialogue and tripartism, Report VI, ILO, Geneva.

Ioannou, G. (2018) Social Dialogue Environment in the Greek Cypriot Community, Cyprus Dialogue Forum

Karnite, R. (2016), An attempt to revitalize social dialogue and national industrial relations systems in some of the CEECs – Lessons learnt and best practices in the way out of the crisis, final report, http://socdial.eu/page/2679/html/expert-materials.html

Lesch, H. and Vogel, S. (2017) Working together: Germany’s response to the global economic and financial crisis, in Guardiancich, I. and Molina, O. (eds.) Talking through the crisis: Social dialogue and industrial relations trends in selected EU countries, ILO, Geneva.

Molina, O. and Guardiancich, I. (2017) Comparative overview: National trajectories and good practices in social dialogue, in Guardiancich, I. and Molina, O. (eds.) (2017) Talking through the crisis: Social dialogue and industrial relations trends in selected EU countries, ILO, Geneva.

Sonan, S. (2018) Social Dialogue Environment in the Turkish Cypriot Community, Cyprus Dialogue Forum

Weber, T. and Pavlovaite, I. (2018), EU Social Partners’ project on “The European Social Fund: Supporting Social Dialogue at National, Regional and Local Levels”, Final report, Integrated Projects of the EU Social dialogue 2016-2018

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[1] For this to be achieved, the social partners will need to be in closer communication with the two leaders and their teams from the negotiation stage, and be ready to come up with detailed proposals concerning the social dialogue process of united Cyprus immediately after the agreement is reached.

Gender at work

Extract from an academic article that was also published in "Entropia, issue 12 " https://entropia.syspirosiatakton.org/

Gender at work¹

Gregoris Ioannou

Gender often impacts on the division of labor, fragments the workforce and assigns gendered characteristics in specific sectors and occupations. These processes are nominally informal, yet as they are operationalized in the labor process, they may become formalized or interact positively as well as negatively with other formal divisions (Dyer, McDowell, and Batnitzky 2010; Johnston and Lee 2012).  Women are underrepresented in middle and higher-ranking positions—as well as trade unions and trade union committees—and are, correspondingly, generally speaking, paid less and overrepresented in low-waged positions (Ioakimoglou and Soumeli 2008).

Despite all the legislation, technocratic policy suggestions and public rhetoric about (the need of) gender equality, there are still exclusively masculine and exclusively feminine jobs and primarily masculine and primarily feminine jobs coexisting with gender neutral jobs in all the industries of the Cypriot economy.² This is a result of the maintenance and reproduction of patriarchal structures of thought and action and gendered conceptions of the social reality, in which occupational sex segregation prevails and women’s work is socially and institutionally under valued (Perales 2013). Notions of the “proper” or “suitable” occupations for men and women are taken more or less for granted and are thus sustained and reproduced from generation to generation (Ness 2012). Work sex segregation is immensely entrenched, as beyond the social conventions about what jobs women should do or what occupations they can do, gender roles may even become the product of worker agency (Huppatz and Goodwin 2013), or attain the form of a subjective career choice reinforced by self-expression ideals (Cech 2013).

Gender inequality, gender roles and gendered ideological frames are subject to historical change and in fact throughout the 20^th century and especially in its second half gender relations in Cyprus underwent significant transformation. There has been an obvious improvement of the social position of women facilitated through their mass entry into the labor market (Christodoulou 1992), the increasing international influences and most specifically the path toward entry in the EU, which has brought legislative and institutional changes and the changing mentalities and lifestyles prevailing by the last quarter of the 20^th century. However, traditional values and social conservatism remain strong and so does one of the basic axioms of the patriarchal mode of thinking—sex work segregation.

The gendering of specific occupations in most industries is a “taken for granted” phenomenon. My informants were puzzled, probably thinking that there was something wrong with me, when I asked them why there are no men cleaners or secretaries and why there are no women builders or technicians. These questions seemed kind of strange or even childish. Employers, managers and trade unionists responded by pointing out the lack of women applicants for such “men’s jobs” and vice versa and when asked why they thought this was so, they resorted to various social stereotypes about the abilities and qualities of the genders.

            Men do not clean well.³

            Customers do not like to have men cleaning their rooms.⁴

            Women cannot endure the physical burden required in construction.⁵

The explanations given for the segregation of the genders at work were not restricted to biological attributes, but also included social and sexual explanations.

            Women have to take care of their family and do not have time or ambition for

            careers.⁶

            If women were employed in construction they would sexually distract the men

            workers who would be staring at their legs and breasts.⁷

The segregation of the genders at work is only the first step in the gendering process. Once it is established that a specific occupation or work position belongs to men or women, the next step is to attribute male or female characteristics to the job itself.

            Get a lady to clean here.⁸

            When there is a technical problem in a room I call Mr X [head of maintenance

            department] to send me one of his men upstairs to fix it.⁹

            I have no problem with my girls. They are conscientious and hard-working.¹⁰

Since it is women who do and have always done the cleaning, it becomes customary to refer to the hotels’ or the banks’ cleaners as “the women”.¹¹ “It was the women that started the 1999 strike. They were the stronger card of the trade unions”.¹² The division into masculine and feminine jobs is also rationalized and internalized by the women themselves. Many women, for example, referred to biological factors to explain the division into “masculine” and “feminine” jobs. At the same time they said that full equality between the genders has not been achieved although significant progress has been made. Some considered masculine jobs more challenging, but complained that men think of feminine jobs as pointless and boring.¹³ Thus, occupational sex segregation segments the labor market assigning women to lower wage and lower status jobs, but this also can impact negatively on particular groups of men as well who tend to avoid jobs that are classified as “feminine” reducing the range of their employment opportunities (Moskos 2012).

Discrimination on the basis of gender with respect to upward mobility is present and visible to most workers and this applies to both unionized and nonunionized workplaces.

            There is discrimination. They don’t give money to women. They say, she has

            a man so they do not promote her. . . . I started work here at the same time

            with some men colleagues. They have become chef de partie, I have remained

            a cook B.¹⁴

Beyond the classic explanation of male bread-winning ideology and the lack of interest of women in careers, there is also a reflexive stance trying to put the women themselves in the equation.

            We, older women are more submissive. The younger women are more

            demanding. Of course there is discrimination. Why are there not women sous

            chefs?¹⁵

In the Cooperative Central Bank, one middle-aged female employee explained the “war” she and her colleagues waged in the past for their rights, provoking the intervention of the trade union.Things have improved in the last decade, she admitted:

            ... but not to the extent we want. Patriarchy is still here and the struggle must

            continue.It is up to us the women, to a certain extent.We must not tolerate the

            establishment and must seek with our qualifications and our argumentations to

            rectify the injustice we suffer.¹⁶

Gender however, is not only a factor of discrimination and division in the work place. It is  simultaneously a factor allowing and facilitating the creation of work collectivities based on common experiences and common work life circumstances. Gender is in other words not only fragmenting the labor force in the interests of exploitation and oppression, but can also constitute a resource of uniting individual workers, promoting notions of collective identity and commonality of interests based on the real commonality of working conditions and the idea of a shared fate. Women workers who are working together in say the housekeeping or the restaurants department of a hotel sometimes find their gender identity to be a significant element both in their communication and interaction at work and in their construction of social relations of solidarity and coping strategies.¹⁷

1. This text constitute part of the chapter 'Gender, Ethnicity, and Age at Work' of the article ''Labour force Fragmantation in Contemporary Cyprus'', which was published in Working USA, The Journal of Labour and Society in 2015.

2. The state and the social partners recognized with considerable delay the seriousness of the problem of the pay gap between men and women (Labor Relations Department 2007), but little was done and with limited success, as it remained as high as 24% in 2010 (Kambouridou 2010; Lambraki 2010; Soumeli 2010) when the Labor Relations Department began a more active attempt to deal with it. However, although it has more recently fallen to 16.4%, it remains one of the highest ones among EU states (Sigmalive 3/11/2014).

3. Case study 2, housekeeper.

4. Case study 3, gousekeeper.

5. Case study 6, foreman. The same explanation was used by trade unionists.

6. This argument was used by both men and women workers in case studies 3, 4, and 5.

7. Case study 7, foreman. The sexual distraction argument was used by some men workers as well.

8. Case study 1, food and beverage manager.

9. Case study 3, housekeeper.

10. Case study 2, housekeeper.

11. Case studies 1, 2, 3, and 4—interviews with housekeepers.

12. Case study 1, head barman.

13. Case study 6, secretary and sales person.

14. Case study 3, woman cook B.

15. Case study 3, woman cook A.

16. Case study 5, middle-aged woman, departmental manager A.

17. Case study 3.

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