Workers in the cement industry on Sunday called on the government to take a more active role in sorting out their labour crisis, with a strike ongoing for more than two weeks that has brought the construction industry to its knees.

At the same time, the union officials from Sek, Peo and Deok who met on Sunday afternoon to decide the next steps called on workers to “continue all together in the effort until their struggle is vindicated”.

In a joint statement, the unions said they would “demand from the government to act with greater decisiveness and call on employers to respect the agreed collective agreements and to show more will to discuss overtime payments”.

They also called on the employers to approach negotiations in a spirit of cooperation.

On Wednesday the unions had rejected the labour minister’s latest proposal for a solution to the dispute, which led Minister Yiannis Panayiotou to express his over the fate of the construction industry.

The association of ready-mixed concrete manufacturers had agreed to the proposal.

Unions are demanding to be paid for overtime worked and a return to their pre-2013 collective labour agreements.