Labour Minister Yiannis Panayiotou on Wednesday night praised both workers and employers in the concrete sector for agreeing to the negotiation framework he has devised with the aim of bringing to an end the strikes which have been taking place in the industry over the last week.

Employers, led by concrete manufacturers’ association head Costas Kythreotis, had as recently as Tuesday refused to participate in meetings with Panayiotou and outright rejected the framework.

“It did not leave any room for negotiations to be entered,” Kythreotis said.

However, it appears employers have now retreated from this stance, with Panayiotou saying both sides are now willing to negotiate based on the framework he devised, and describing this as a “positive development”.

He said the framework “captures the facts on the ground and the convergences” and will “facilitate the next steps of the process”.

Additionally, he said, both sides’ acceptance of the framework “signals the existence of common ground between the two sides”.

With this in mind, he urged striking workers to get back to work, saying strikes “work restrictively for social dialogue and collective bargaining”, and that instead, both sides should “participate in this effort to bridge the differences by presenting their positions constructively.”

The concrete manufacturers’ association said they will hold a meeting on Thursday to make a collective decision on their next steps.

The workers had initially gone on strike last week, demanding to be paid for overtime worked and a return to their pre-2013 collective labour agreement conditions.

Trade union Peo secretary-general Sotiroula Charalambous said at the outset of the strike that workers were demanding “two basic rights”.

“It is well known that when we signed the contract to reduce some of our benefits during the economic crisis to help the construction sector and employers, to help the country’s economy, the signature had an expiration date, and those who signed took this commitment on,” she began.

She added, “societies and workers must go forward, so today, in 2024, we cannot be asked to not be paid overtime, in an industry where the amount of work being done continues to grow.”

Fellow trade union Sek secretary-general Andreas Matsas said, “right now, the focus of the fight is on us trying to make sure that the time you are forced to spend at work, above and beyond your standard working hours, is paid for in a rewarding way.”

“We are living in a period in which we are trying to regulate, not deregulate, labour relations, to give impetus to the support of human resources and to confirm that the labour market is not only about entrepreneurship, it is about workers themselves,” he added.