SCC Calls for Strike Wednesday after Failure to Refer Wage Scale to Parliament
The Syndicate Coordination Committee announced on Saturday that it will stage a strike on Wednesday over the officials' failure to refer the new wage scale to parliament for approval.
The SCC will hold the strike and stage a sit-in at Beirut's Riad al-Solh Square, it announced in light of the joint parliamentary committees' failure on Friday to finalize the discussion of the new wage scale.
It accused officials of yielding to pressure from the Economic Committees when it failed to refer the wage scale to parliament.
The strike will include all public institutions and public and private schools.
The SCC warned that it may hold an open-ended strike starting April 7 should the joint parliamentary committees fail to approve the wage scale.
The escalation may reach the point of suspending official school exams.
Head of the Parliamentary Finance Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan said after Friday's meeting: “The atmosphere was positive and we finalized the report and started discussions over the legal clauses in the new wage scale.”
“Discussions over laws consisting of 200 articles cannot end in two hours,” he said, explaining the delay in referring the draft laws to parliament.
“We reached consensus over the principles of the new wage scale and some things are still pending such as the issue of administration, the six extraordinary levels and the issue of the military and the teachers,” he noted.
He revealed that the committees “improved the draft law that was referred by the previous cabinet because it does not secure fairness and equality among all sectors.”
Former Prime Minister Najib Miqati's cabinet endorsed in 2012 a new salary scale for public employees ending a long dispute that had prompted the SCC, a coalition of private and public school teachers and public sector employees, to hold several sit-ins and strikes.
President Michel Suleiman signed the decree mid-June 2013 and it was referred to the joint parliamentary committees for further scrutiny.
The wage increase will be retroactive from July 1, 2012.
The state treasury will have more than $1.2 billion to cover as there are over 180,000 public sector employees including military personnel.
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