The first 10 days of March are expected to be paid to the eligible workers, the special purpose compensation based on the 534 euros for the suspensions of contracts February. Those who were declared suspended for the whole of February will receive 534 euros. By contrast, those who have been suspended for only a certain period of time will receive €19.07 per calendar day of suspension.
For example:
- Employee who was declared suspended as of February 11 - when the new lockdown - by 28 February will receive 343,26€ from the state. He must be paid by his employer a proportion of his salary for the first 10 days of February.
- A worker who was declared suspended from February 11 - when the new lockdown started - until February 28, but was declared suspended in time and for the first 10 days of February will receive €534
- A worker who was suspended from 15 February to 28 February will receive €267 from the state. He must be paid by his employer a proportion of his salary for the first 14 days of February.
In the meantime, the next 24 hours will see the announcement of the March contract suspensions. Under the amendment passed by the Labor Ministry, all employees hired on or before Jan. 31 this year can be suspended in March, while the suspensions shall be valid for the duration of the suspension of the respective undertaking or branch due to the coronavirus or belonging to sectors affected by the coronavirus and in any case until 31 March 2021.
For example:
- If and when retail businesses open in March, then retail CDOs will logically be closed for a certain period of time in March and will be underperforming for another period of time, as has been the case for other months in the recent past.
- If the retail sector opens from next Monday, March 1, then the relevant CODs are expected to enter March as affected.
In any case, the obligation to give advance notice of suspensions, which premiered in February, is not expected to change. And as the recommendations of the infectious diseases specialists and the government's decisions on extending or ending the lockdown are expected towards Friday, the EIS with the details of the March suspensions and the lists of closed and affected CDOs, which will - as always - trigger the start of the electronic declarations in “Ergani”, should not be expected before Friday or the weekend.
Therefore, market officials believe that the most likely solution is to adopt a February model, i.e. to give a few 24-hour window at the beginning of next week, so that the contract suspensions of March can be announced by those closed and affected. Recall that in November, December, January and February the contract suspensions applied to workers recruited up to 4 November. It was a safety valve that had been legislated after the announcement of the second lockdown to prevent last-minute «monkey» hiring to target the inflated compensation for the November suspensions, which was then 800 euros.
Since then, the EIS on contract suspensions has been renewed every month, due to the continuous extension of the lockdown, and the date of 4 November has been maintained. Experts recently sounded the alarm bell, claiming that tens of thousands of newly hired workers were excluded from the February suspensions, even though the businesses they worked for were closed by government order. Now, as the gap since November is long and new hires cannot be placed on probation, this issue is being corrected. So those hired by 1/31 will be placed on probation in March.
As announced by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, today, February 24, the payments of special purpose allowances from unilateral declarations (B’ Opportunity) will be made:
- To art and culture professionals, tour guides and tourist guides for the months of September-October 2020
- To art and culture professionals for the months of November-December 2020
- Among those made redundant due to cyclone «IANOS»
