SCC to Issue Stance on Amended Wage Scale amid 'War' Threat

Syndicate Coordination Committee official Nehme Mahfoud said that the SCC will issue its stance from the amended version of the public sector pay hike draft-law on Tuesday amid a warning that the coalition would launch “war” against the raise.

“The SCC will meet this afternoon to state its remarks on the pay raise in its new form and will inform Speaker Nabih Berri about them,” Mahfoud, who is the head of the private school teachers association, told Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3).

Berri was on Monday reluctant to call for a parliamentary session to vote on the wage scale. Instead he referred copies of the amendments made by a committee to the SCC, Prime Minister Tammam Salam and the finance ministry to hear their remarks.

The committee, which was formed a few weeks ago after lawmakers failed to agree on the raise, handed Berri on Monday the amended version of the wage scale.

But head of Public Secondary School Education Teachers Association Hanna Gharib told As Safir newspaper that the amended draft-law was tantamount to war against the public sector.

“It is a plan to liquidate what's left of the public sector,” he said.

Gharib accused the members of the ministerial-parliamentary committee of hitting the retirement system, social services and the rights of teachers.

He reiterated that the SCC will only accept a 121 percent wage hike as initially approved by ex-PM Najib Miqati's government in 2012 after the committee reduced the total funding from LL2.8 trillion ($1.9 billion) to LL1.8 trillion ($1.2 billion).

The committee also proposed raising the Value Added Tax from 10 to 11 percent on certain services, and customs by five percent on some items.

But Gharib rejected the measures.

“We won't have anything to lose. They wanted war, then that's what they will get,” he said.

The SCC, a coalition of private and public school teachers and public sector employees, has been staging protests to push lawmakers into approving the scale in its initial form despite warnings by some politicians and major businessmen of its negative effects on the economy.