Labour Rights in Greece after 3 Years of Austerity

 14 May 2013

This small symposium - Cure the Disease and Kill the Patient: Labour Rights in Greece after 3 Years of Austerity - focuses on the state of labour law in Greece after 3-years of austerity and deregulatory reforms partly introduced to satisfy the requirements imposed by the EU Commission-ECB-IMF Memoranda of Understanding accompanying the country's two main bailout packages of May 2010 and February 2012.

In recent years, even months, the issue of rapidly declining labour rights standards in Greece has become the subject of intense academic debate and (more recently) human rights litigation, with a number of regional and international organisations assessing recent reforms against Greece's international human/labour rights obligations. In 2011 a Report of the ILO High Level Mission to Greece, explicitly noted that 'overall, the changes being introduced to the industrial relations system in the current circumstances are likely to have a spillover effect on collective bargaining as a whole, to the detriment of social peace and society at large' and reminded Greece of its obligations 'under ratified Conventions to promote the practice of collective bargaining in general'. These concerns are, if anything, more forcefully expressed in last year's 356th Report of the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association (cf. page 249-274). The European Committee of Social Rights, in two recent decisions of 2012, was even more explicit in declaring the Greek state in breach of Articles 1, 4, 7, and 10 of the European Social Charter.

This event proposes to debate in greater detail the labour law, industrial relations and human rights implications of these reforms from a national, European, and ILO perspective.

Speakers:

• Dr Aristea Koukiadaki (Lecturer in Employment Studies, University of Manchester);
• Dr Lefteris Kretsos (Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations, University of Greenwich);
• Dr Giuseppe Casale (Director, ILO Department of Labour Administration);
• Colm O'Cinneide (Reader in Laws, UCL; Vice-President of the European Committee of Social Rights)

The event is supported by the UCL European Institute.