CyBC employees to strike still, despite budget approval

State broadcaster (CyBC) employees will be going on a one-hour strike on Friday, over delays in receiving their pay, despite assurances during a meeting that their wages would be paid later in the day.

According to an announcement from the CyBC unions, employees will strike from 1.30pm until 2.30pm.

On Wednesday, following a meeting with Labour Minister Yiannis Panayiotou, unions were informed that the plan is to pay the employees by Friday.

Sek union general secretary Andreas Elias said that it is evident that wages will be paid on time.

“We want to be clear that we expect the final results,” he said.

Delays to paying the employees were seen to also be due to fact that the semi-governmental organisation had submitted its budget late to parliament for approval.

On Thursday, the budgets for CyBC along with several other semi-governmental organisations were passed by parliament in the nick of time.

This move allowed these organisations to resume normal payment procedures.

During the months of January and February, organisations whose budgets have yet to get the nod from parliament, can still pay staff under a temporary system known as ‘twelfths’ – where only a sum equivalent to not more than one twelfth of the budget appropriations for the previous year may be spent each month for any chapter of the budget.

The ‘twelfths’ system expired at the end of February – meaning that if the budgets of these organisations had not passed this month, they would be barred from making any payments and hundreds of employees would have been left unpaid.

To date, 41 out of the 43 semi-governmental organisations have had their budgets passed. The two outliers are the Technical University of Cyprus (Tepak) and the Office of the Commissioner for the Electronic Communications and Postal Regulation.

Regarding CyBC, its budget came to €39.3 million. Payroll accounts for €26.7 million.

The passage of the budget should have defused tensions at CyBC, where unions had threatened strikes unless the March salaries were paid out.

However, the situation with payment of salaries is complicated by the fact that all CyBC bank accounts have been frozen, on the strength of a court order.