Table 1: Public sector workers (2006-2011)
which was collected just before the implementation of the 1-to-5 rule, the voluntary departure schemes and the exodus of thousands under early retirement for fear of cutbacks shows that the number of civil servants shrank by more than 200,000. All those who insist that employment in the public sector did not decrease should compare this figure with the following statement of thenMinister of Interior Giannis Ragkousis: at the end of our four-year mandate, 200,000 civil servants will have left. It is worth noting here that, had the Papandreou government not fallen prematurely, it would have completed its four-year mandate as late as 2013. There is however an element of truth in the increase of the mean gross salary, as according to the same study of Ministry of Interior it rose by approx. 20% between 2006 and 2009 (over the same period, GDP rose by 11%). But because mean averages don't always tell the truth, we will look next at the actual distribution of salary costs in the huge public sector.
lowed by spreading negative stereotypes for each category as a whole. As a result, all taxi drivers are thieves, all doctors are taxdodgers, all lawyers are privileged, but most importantly, each group separately constitutes an organized guild with powerful interests, which led the Greek State to bankruptcy. The dominant guild of workers is civil servants, who according to the dominant narrative were all recruited as a political favour, are all lazy, all get fat pay checks and in practice, are all useless. The most powerful propaganda weapon against civil servants and particularly against employees of public utility companies is their salary. More specifically, this is defined as the total staff costs (the cumulative total of net salaries, contributions, special bonuses, overtime, and travel costs where relevant) divided by the number of employees of each agency. Astronomic figures in the order of €50,000 to €60.000 per annum were thrown around with this calculation. A sample of the staff categories of 15 public utility com-
Figure 4: Labours expenditure of the General Government as part of the total labour (2000-2008)
Myth 3: The civil servants’ guilds The way the dominant narrative develops and evolves in public discourse is very revealing. Workers are first grouped in separate, opposing camps (private employees vs. civil servants, employees vs. the self-employed, pharmacists vs. notaries, etc). This is fol-
panies puts things in place (Table 2). In the beginning of 2010, before successive pay cuts were enforced under the terms of the Memorandum, the majority of the privileged employees of public utility companies had an annual gross salary ranging from €20,000 to €40.000. This translates into a monthly gross salary of €1,400 to €2,850 and a monthly net salary of €900 to €1,900.