8. The implementation of EU directives in order to ensure cheap labour power, the expansion of flexible working arrangements, and the strengthening of the contributory principle as well as the involvement of the private sector in the social security system, worsened the negative impacts on the condition of the working class which derive from the function of capitalist economy (especially since the outbreak of the crisis in 2008 and 2020). 

These policies are documented in the Europe 2020 strategy and they are coordinated by the “European Semester”, which also monitors these policies in each Member State. EU officials are developing the policies to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in conjunction with the governments of the Member States.

The general trend toward increasing the exploitation of workers remains stable, even after the change in fiscal policy and the adoption of greater state intervention in order to manage the new international economic crisis.

Some state measures, which aim to retain a basic level of working-class consumption, to avoid a mass destruction of the self-employed, and an extensive increase in unemployment and extreme poverty, are temporary and their burden will eventually fall on workers and pensioners over the coming years, in order to pay for the new government loans.

In this direction, the EU, promoting the so-called “European Pillar of Social Rights”, presents the further shrinkage of the price of labour power as “securing a minimum”, flexible working as “work–life balance”, and the privatization of healthcare as “affordable healthcare”. These constitute strategic anti-labour goals of capital, which attempts to condemn to destitution the working class and the poor popular strata.

The National Reform Programmes (NRPs) constitute a fundamental tool for the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy at a national level, they are drawn up by national governments, and they are submitted around mid-April every year along the Stability and Convergence Programmes (SCPs).

NRPs include national goals, which are aligned with the fundamental goals of the EU, their implementation progress, and the measures which will be taken in order to achieve them.

A fundamental direction of the Europe 2020 strategy is to support new investments, the “utilization of new sources of growth”, giving priority to high-tech sectors. This strategy constantly develops with new anti-labour reforms. 

They estimate that “new communication technologies and flexible working can often lead to increased working hours and an overlap between work, privacy, and personal time”.

The 4^th Enhanced Surveillance Report on Greece by the European Commission (November 2019) as well as all the previous ones insist on an intensifying escalation of anti-popular reforms which aim to increase the competitiveness of the capital. It is revealed that the government has agreed to complete an “ex-post evaluation” of the minimal increase which was achieved in February 2019 in collaboration with the World Bank, which will offer “technical support” to monitor developments in the labour market. Furthermore, the fact that the targets for the primary surpluses were surpassed is evaluated positively. 

At the same time, the European Commission focuses on expanding the tax base for ENFIA (single property tax) and other property taxes, which essentially are a series of heavy taxes burdening the working class, like taxes on parental grants, inheritance, conveyance deeds, and the property tax (TAP) which is paid to local authorities (OTA) through electricity bills.

Already since the 90s, there was a trend among nearly all EU member states towards abolishing national and industry-level collective agreements in favour of enterprise-level agreements or individual contracts. Almost identical interventions took place in the collective agreements of three southern European countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece) with similar characteristics. 

The above-mentioned factors objectively influence the unity and consciousness of the working class.

A large proportion of current workers joined the production or reached a productive age after 2009, and therefore has not experienced the rights and achievements which existed before the capitalist economic crisis, and even more before the overthrow of socialism. This fact contributes to a lowering of struggle and demands for an improved standard of living, and to a compromising attitude toward the current state of employment relations.

9. The measures that governments have taken and continue to take over the years from 2010 until today have debilitated a series of labour achievements aiming at the reduction of wages in both the private and the public sector, at making labour relations more flexible. Legislative provisions that deregulated labour rights were actualized, such as:

• Abolition of the Sunday holiday.
• Conversion of full-time contracts to part-time.
• Imposition of rotating employment and contingent labour.
• Facilitation of collective redundancies.
• Reduction of overtime and additional work pay.
• Legalization of the indirect lockout, of payroll lockout.
• Restrictions on strike ballot in the primary trade unions, since a 50% + 1 majority is required in the respective General Assemblies for the formation of a quorum.

The main axes and consequences of the bourgeois policies of restructuring in Greece are:

a) The establishment of flexible work combined with the downgrading and weakening of Collective Agreements, low wages, high unemployment, increased undeclared work, unpaid work with delays in the payment of already done work from 3 to 15 months, have finalized an occupational jungle. At the same time, Occupational Health and Safety conditions are almost non-existent, occupational accidents and diseases are on the rise and have a significant impact on workers' health.

In the annual report of the European Central Bank (ECB) in 2017, the measures that contributed to the growth of employment are specifically named “these (…) which increase labour market flexibility by loosening employment protection, for example by reducing severance payments or making wages more flexible”. The ECB also notes that “the experience of the crises has shown that more flexible economies are more resilient to shocks and tend to experience faster recoveries and higher long-term growth”.

The European trade-unions-turned-bourgeois accept in practice the greater flexibility of working time, e.g. the collective agreement signed by the Metal Trade Union IG Metall in Germany for “voluntary” part-time employment of 28 hours per week for up to two years for employees who have to provide care for young children, the elderly or the sick, under the burden of the shortage of adequate and free health and welfare facilities and services.

The promotion of flexible labour relations, especially among working women, used the objective difficulty of working mothers to combine work with the “individual responsibility” for the care of children, elderly parents, and family, due to the lack of social structures.

According to the reports of the ERGANI, it is observed that part-time employees in the private sector are gradually increasing, from 40.9% in 2017 to 42.53% in 2019, a trend that halted in the first semester of 2020.

TABLE 11

The data illustrate the effect of anti-labour laws on the change in the ratio between full-time to part-time employment in the total of new recruitments, compared to 2015 (full-time employment 54.47%), where the new legislative acts had not yet had a significant effect.

b) The abolition of the list of “unhealthy and arduous occupations” in a number of sectors has led to at least 10 more years of work, eliminating the five-year difference in the retirement age between men and women and levellingany favourable provisions and regulations that applied to women in the name of gender equality. The laws that crush every notion of social security, equalize the retirement age limits that reached 67 years for both sexes, and literally abolish maternity protection. They abolished the right to early retirement of mothers with underage children, family members with disabilities, etc. We should note that in Greece there is no official statistical record of the frequency and severity index of occupational accidents. However, even the simple recording of the number of occupational accidents reflects the deterioration of the situation (from 3,762 in 2013 to 5,330 in 2018). Occupational disease registration also remains virtually non-existent.

c) Due to the adopted laws, the implementation of the mandatory character and the generalization of the collective agreements have been suspended.

The majority of individual contracts convert the employment relationship from full-time to part-time or rotating, with the latter showing an overall increase of 201.95% between 2009–2016. The percentage increase by 790.69% of the forced —unilaterally by the employer— conversions of individual employment contracts into rotating employment is even more impressive.

Concomitantly,  freelance service providing has been extended, which includes a large number of salaried employees without the right to leave (maternity leave, holiday leave, etc.), unemployment benefits, severance and overtime pay, protection from occupational accidents and diseases, etc.

In 2018, 10 collective agreements were declared mandatory, that concern only 10% of all employees (tourism–hotels, banks, shipping and travel agencies). The “expansion” of industry-level collective agreements, even in the few sectors that these are underway or to be initiated, leaves out thousands of employees working under a “flexibility” regime, and in terms of their content, these contracts include major pay cuts and suspension of rights. At the same time, it is legally possible for many enterprises to not implement them.

On the other hand, for many years there have been no industrial-based collective agreements in major sectors of the economy, such as in Trade, the Food Industry, Metal, Pharmaceuticals, Construction, etc.

d) The bourgeois planning for the escalation of the anti-labour attack in the next five years is reflected in the projections of the Pissarides Report which prescribes:

• The determination of the minimum wage by decision of a council of experts, without the consent of the trade union movement.

• The deregulation of employment protection against redundancies by removing the existing restrictions on changing the number of employees.

• The abolition of surcharges for overtime work for the benefit of the monopoly groups.

• The merger and decoupling of the allowances from the amount of the minimum wage with the aim of substantially reducing their amount.

10. The statistics on wages provided by EFKA illustrate a highly significant pay differentiation  among salaried employees for 2019.

Some key conclusions are:

• Wage distribution shows a concentration of employees with wages around 400 euros and another concentration of employees with wages around 1,000 euros, with the former representing precarious workers (part-time employment etc.) and the latter concentration of employees representing full-time employees. To a large extent, this wage differentiation reflects the different industrial relations.
• Women show a higher concentration in the first category relative to men and generally, in terms of “proportionality”, women’s wages are significantly lower than men’s wages. Women with wages under 500 euros represent 1/4, whereas men 1/5.

TABLE 12

Cumulative percentages by gross wage levels for men and women, as a percentage of salaried employee pay (men and women respectively) of up to 2,500 euros.

Each row contains the percentage of salaried employees with wages up to the gross wage given, e.g. 60.6% of men and 65.7% of women are paid a gross wage of 1,000 euros. It follows from the table that (95.91% - 60.6%)= 35.3% of men and (96.98% - 65.68%)= 31.3% of women are paid a wage of 1,000–2,000 euros. The corresponding percentages for wages of 1,000–1,500 euros are 24.6% for men and 23.7% for women, whereas for wages of 1,500–2,000 the percentages are 9.7% and 7.6%. This reflects the fact that the differentiation between men’s and women’s percentages within each wage category generally widens as wage increases. This differentiation reflects, to a certain extent, the increased representation of women in low-wage sectors, in low-skilled positions and shorter working hours, but also the higher rates of long-term unemployment of women.

                                                     Source: EFKA

• It is worth noting that in spite of the differences, 35.1% of all men and 31.3% of all women salaried employees are paid a wage of 1,000–2,000 euros.
• The substantial differences in the average wage of men and women reflect the higher part-time employment of women as a factor of particular importance, the higher participation of men in high wages, but also a general trend of lower wages in women that persists, even if less acute than in the past. The lower participation of older women in the economically active population is also a contributing factor.
• The minimum wage for full-time employment seems to be, especially for women, “a safety net” that holds back the wage for the bracket of employees in full-time employment. The “distribution” of wages shows that if there was no minimum wage, a “spreading” of employees to lower wages (the “natural” maximum of the distribution seems to be 100 euros higher than minimum wage) would appear.
• There is a significant wage differentiation for employees in full-time work, with the relative differentiation in men being more pronounced than the differentiation in women. Indicatively, 29% of the employees work part-time and earn an average wage of 375.53 euros (in 2010 the corresponding percentage did not exceed 15% with a wage of 562 euros). 71% of employees work full time earning a net average wage of 1,111.09 euros (compared to 1,394 euros in 2010).
• For employees with a wage between 800–2,500 euros, as shown in the table, the ratios of men and women are much more uniform, with men having a slightly higher wage. At the same time, women in full-time jobs seem to be “pushed” more towards minimum wage, in the lower full-time wage bands.
• Regarding wage progression: the average gross wage is reduced and stands at 960.93 euros (compered to 1,253 euros in 2010). The percentage of employees with net earnings below 1,000 euros has significantly increased, while more than 1 in 4 employees are paid the minimum wage.
• 87% of male salaried employees are paid a wage below 1,500 euros and 8% a wage from 1,500 to 2,500, while the corresponding percentages for women are 94% and 4%. These data are indicative for upper limits only.
• Fully indicative of the large sectoral differentiations in the wage size is the size of the average gross wage (even if the concept of average hides the large differentiations) together with the employee contributions in certain sectors as regorded in EFKA data:
  
  • ‣Maritime Transport: 2,543 euros
  • ‣Banking Services: 2,264 euros
  • ‣Oil Production: 2,668 euros
  • ‣Basic Metal Production : 1,597 euros
  • ‣Construction: 1,018 euros
  • ‣Food–Beverage: 1,043 euros
  • ‣Retail Trade: 946 euros
  • ‣Hospitality–Tourism: 699 euros
  • ‣Other business activities: 1,081 euros

11. The Katrougkalos Law (Law 4387/2016 named after the former Minister of Labour G. Katrougalos), which defines the terms of social security for the next 50 years, is of strategic importance for capital. Based on this law, the main pension was separated into national and contributory. It leads to the provision of the limited state pension, financed by general taxation, and to the withdrawal of its guarantee from the rest of the pension that was called contributory,  thus opening the way for contributory principle, i.e. of private insurance.

This Law will be aggressively implemented by the New Democracy government, fortifying it with additional provisions and mainly by pursuing new regulations, in order to “legitimize” all the former setbacks sustained by the insured persons and pensioners and to expand private insurance. According to the Report of the State General Accounting Office that accompanied the “law–guillotine”, its implementation from its adoption in 2016 until the end of 2019 takes away from the insured people and the pensioners the amount of 8.2 billion euros!

The EU is promoting a policy “that aims at increasing the use of individual pensions in the EU”.

The individualization of pension provision has been set in motion, which refers to the loss of intergenerational solidarity and enhances the contributory principle and “individual responsibility” for the insurance of the worker and his family.

Pensions from the Public Social Security Systems are planned that lead literally to starvation, and pensions from funded systems, that is, private systems, either through Professional Association Funds or through private capitalist insurance providers.

The notion of individualization (individual employment contracts, individual insurance, etc.) is dangerous. It forces workers to abandon collective bargaining of the terms of the sale of labour power, to abandon collective social rights and the joint demands by the working class against the class of capitalists and their state.

The aims of this attack are:

• To make workers stay in work for “a longer period”, so as to ensure the “viability” of the social security system, thus leading to a further increase of the current retirement age of 67 years for men and women.
• The reduction of “non-wage labour cost”, as it is called by the capitalists and their governments, their parties, and the EU; because it is not a matter of cost. It comes about from the labour of the workers; it is part of the worker’s wage. This will take place with the reduction of social security contributions.
• The “minimization of cases of early retirement” (i.e. before the age of 67) that includes some jobs such as “unhealthy and arduous occupations”, issues like disability due to an accident, an occupational disease etc.

The ND government carries on, based on Katrougkalos Law, and promotes the social insurance system of “three pillars”, the World Bank model from the 1990s and following the overhtrows in the countries where socialism was being built. A huge blow, if not the final, is given to the right to public Social Insurance, which is transformed into an “investment”, a personal risk and pursuit through gambling.

12. During the crisis that broke out in 2008, the number of those registered as unemployed from 485 thousand in 2009 skyrocketed in 2013, a peak year, to 1,330 million (+ 174%) and since then has remained stable above 1 million until 2017. Unemployment increased from 9.6% in 2010 to 27.5% in 2013, while it remained over 20% up to 2017. The increase in unemployment is general and concerns all categories, sex, age, education, and duration. At younger ages (15–39 years) the official unemployment rate, despite extensive emigration, reached 36% in 2013 and remains above 20% in 2019. At older ages (50+), whereas it was at 5%in 2009, it is consistently above 10% throughout the decade (it reached 19% in 2016 and 12% in 2019). The pool of the unemployed was supplied, in addition to mass dismissals, by the crumbling of the petty bourgeois strata. About 10% of the unemployed persons report each year that their previous employment was either their own enterprise or that they were contributing family workers.

TABLE 13

10-year changein unemployment figures

                          Source: ELSTAT, LFS

The comparison of changes in employment and unemployment gives both an indication of the levels of migration and undeclared work. About 225 thousand workers found themselves outside the labour market and shifted by 38 thousand to the inactive population, while 186 thousand shifted mainly to migration, either as emigrants or foreign workers returning home, and secondarily towards “off the books” labour.

In the past three years, during the period of the relative weak recovery of 2016–2019, both the number of the unemployed and that of the unemployment rate decline. The number of the unemployed decreased in 2019 by 312 thousand compared to 2016 (-27.6%), while the unemployment rate fell to 17.3%. The long-term unemployed decreased by 240 thousand. The decrease of the unemployed numbers is general and concerns all categories, sex, age, and education, while there are geographic regions, such as that of the Aegean and Crete, where unemployment in 2019 reached 10%; significantly lower than the national average. The reduction of unemployment, however, is not translated directly into an increase in employment, since the workforce appears to be decreasing. Part of the unemployed do not return to the labour market, either because they are retiring or because they are headed to undeclared work, while migration has also played an essential role.

13. Total self-employment, in the context of the Greek capitalist economy, shows trends of net reduction by 130 thousand from 2009 to 2019. However, the distribution between the self-employed in agricultural production and the reduction of the urban self-employed is unequal. During the paste decade, a distinct decline of urban self-employed without employees was recorded. Nevertheless, their generally contradictory course, which is characterized by occassional recoveries and clear differences per sector, is not reversed. In parallel with the general trend of concentration and centralization, which objectively leads sectors of the self-employed to ruin, halting trends coexist that lead to the reproduction of parts self-employed in various sectors, depending on the development of the capitalist economy and the interventions of governmental and EU policy. These strata remain numerous; the percentage of very small enterprises and more specifically of self-employed without employees remains particularly large in Greece in relation to the average of the EU-28.

Negative-growth trends were registered, which concern only the period of crisis, as well as some more general negative-growth trends, which also concern the period of the capitalist recovery. The downward trend appears more constant in Commerce, Manufacturing and Construction; nonetheless these sectors still concentrate cumulatively over 220 thousand self-employed. After the phase of capitalist crisis, ups and downs were recorded in Tourism–Hospitality and Transport, while a rising trend is observed in self-employment in Science and Technology (despite the fact that in this category a wage relationship is hidden which is yet revealed through freelance service providing).

On the contrary, in the agricultural sector the number of people whose principal professional activity is farming (with or without employees) remains roughly constant. The part of the farmers that tries to endure as individual agricultural producers, comes up to 240 thousands of farmers, livestock breeders and fishermen. They correspond to 90% of agricultural holdings.

14. The trend shifts from one region to another differ significantly in relation to the whole country, with changes extending from 6% decrease in Attica, Western Greece and West Macedonia, to 4% increase in Crete and in South Aegean and an impressive 11% increase in the North Aegean, something that is perhaps related to refugee management. As regards the structure in the country, Attica concentrates 35% of the total population, followed by Central Macedonia which concentrates 17%.

Table 14

Population per region (in thousands) and changes during the decade

                                               * Percentage of change in 2008–2019.

                                               ** Percentage of regional population to total population.

                                               Source: ELSTAT

15. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) in 2019 reported 537,600 immigrants[1] in Greece, corresponding to 5.1% of the total population (showing a 32% decrease, compared to the 790,100 immigrants reported in the 2011 census). Despite the significant decrease reported between the 2019 LFS and the 2011 census, the distribution of immigrants per region according to the 2019 LFS is presented in Table 15, in order to examine certain trends.

According to data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of asylum seekers and refugees reached 120,000 in the first semester of 2020. Approximately 33% of them are found in the islands and 67% in the mainland.

TABLE 15

Regional distribution of population per nationality (in thousands)

                                      * % of immigrants in the region, in the total number of immigrants in the country.

                                      ** % of immigrants in the region, in the total number of immigrants in the region.

                                      Source: ELSTAT, LFS

In the same six regions as in 2011, the percent of immigrants in the total population of the region is above the national average. This reflects the conditions of the capitalist economic development in these regions (concentration of industrial, tourism–hospitality, and farming–livestock breeding activity), which requires low and medium skilled workforce. It should be noted that the capitalist economic crisis has led to a decrease in the percent of immigrants in the total population of these six regions.

16. Based on the historical database of the LFS, the reported employment of immigrants in Greece for the 1996–2019 period  is presented in Table 16:

TABLE 16

It is not possible to determine whether the large percent increase reported for the 1996–2006 period in Table 16 reflects a real increase in the number of immigrants or a significant decrease in unreported and undeclared employment. However, the most probable scenario is that this increase is due to an improved recording of the real number of immigrant workers in the censuses. It should be noted that the total number of immigrants was approximately 500,000 at its pro-crisis peak .

It is certain that the capital economic crisis hit immigrants hard. The unemployment rate started rising from 2009 and peaked in 2013, when approximately 4 out of 10 migrants were unemployed. Theunemploymentrateamongst immigrants would have been much higher if a large number of immigrants from neighbouring countries, such as Albania, had not returned to their home countries or gone to other countries to seek work. Itshould be mentionedthat when the immigrants’ unemployment peaked in 2013, the unemployment rate among Greek citizens was significantly lower (26.5%) but equally alarming.

17. The statistical index “occupational status” provides some initial and general information on the relationship between immigrants in Greece with the ownership in the means of production, distinguishing them to salaried workers, employers and self-employed. This analysis does not include the category “contributing family workers”, as the size of this category is negligible.

The 2011 Census provides the following data on the employment of immigrants based on their “occupational status”:

TABLE 17

Occupational status based on nationality

                                           Source: ELSTAT, 2011 Census

Based on the information from Table 17, the vast majority of immigrants are salaried employees (85%). Inthesizablecategoryofself-employed, immigrants are under-represented compared to Greeks (11.2% immigrants compared to 23.7% Greeks). Very few foreign citizens are employers in Greece. Considering the very small representation of immigrant salaried employees in the categories “senior managers”, “technicians”, the vast majority of immigrant salaried employees belong to the working class. Thisfactexplainswhythecapitalisteconomiccrisisand the consequential unemployment has such a big of an effect on immigrants.

The LFS provides the following distribution of salaried employees based on their occupational status in 2019:

TABLE 18

Occupationalstatus per nationality (in thousands)

                                           Source: ELSTAT, LFS 2019

The significant decrease in immigrants’ employment during the capitalist economic crisis is also presented in Table 18. Currently, immigrants account for just 5.9% of the total workforce, compared to 10.5% in 2011. Immigrant workers are still a significant proportion among unskilled workers and skilled technicians. However, like for the rest of the occupations, thei rpercent contribution has dropped significantly. Many immigrant workers are employed in the services sector. In particular, more immigrant workers are employed in this sector, in absolute numbers, compared to the number of immigrant workers employed as skilled technicians. The significant decrease in the number of immigrantworkersemployed in the farming–livestock breeding sector is worth to be mentioned. In 2011, 33,753 immigrant workers were employed in this sector, accounting for the 10.7% of the total number of persons working in the sector. By 2019, their number shrank to 9,400 or 2.3% of the total number of employed persons in the sector. As there are significant differences in the numbers provided by the LFS and the Census for the particular sector, the difference between the two years may be notional. Forinstance, theLFSreports for 2011 a significantly lower number of skilled farmers and much fewer immigrant workers in this sector (14,800). Therefore, according to the LFS, the immigrant workers were just 3.1% of the employees in the farming–livestock breeding sector  in 2011.

In general, for all the sectors with a strong presence of immigrant workers in 2011, this presence remained strong in 2019, as well. However, immigrants’ percent participation in each sector has decreased. For instance, in the sector of domestic workers, immigrants’ contribution dropped from 81.1% to 61.2%, in the Construction sector from 29% to 21.8%, in the Tourism–Hospitality sector from 18.4% to 14.3%, in the Support service activities from 19.8% to 12.7% and in the Agricultural sector sank from 19.2% to 6.4%. Thesenumbersdonotnecessarilyreflectreality, owing to the large number of undeclared work of immigrant workers, particularly among domestic workers. In the Manufacturing sector, the contribution of immigrant workers decreased both in absolute numbers and in percent. Nevertheless, thedecreaseisnotasdramaticasinother sectors and the contribution of immigrant workers in this sector shows remarkable resilience (2% more than the average).

In the total number of immigrant workers, about 23.9% work in the Tourism–Hospitality sector, 14.1% in Construction, 13% in Manufacturing, 12.9% in Trade, 12.8% in the Agricultural sector and 6.7% are domestic workers.

18. Teleworking and its implementation, apart from its consequences on labour relations and the degree of exploitation, is expected to have a significant impact on the structure of the workforce, especially in relation to the place of work and residence. Teleworking allows movement outside the urban fabric and counter-urbanization trends at a national level, while the same trend, allows residence in Athens / Greece and employment even abroad at an international level.

Restructuring and concentration of employees in the Commerce sector is expected in the next period, due to e-commerce. One part of employees will definitely work in e-commerce management and another in the subsector of delivery services. A possible reduction in the banking sector is expected. The overall impact on employment is expected to be negative in the next four years as the digital transformation of several sectors of the economy advances.

19. Based on the sectoral classification of the working class, the industry dynamic, and the respective importance of sectors to the extended reproduction of social capital, we can assess that the below sectors will be of increasing importance for the upcoming period:

• Manufacturing, with a particular focus on the large workplaces in Food, Energy, Pharmaceutical and Metal Industries. The subsector of large-scale constructions and public works.
• The key sector for the whole economy, which is Transportation–logistics and transportation in general (sea, air, land etc.). Under the new conditions, the great importance of the goods distribution sector (courier services) is pointed out.
• Telecommunication/IT, for its importance as the backbone of information transfer, the increased role of technicians to ensure teleworking, etc. At the same time, the IT sector is expected to expand, both due to its development in the country and in teleworking from abroad.
• The sector of Scientific–Technical services, which is expected to grow in the following period, since the new economic and social conditions increase the relative activities.
• Health and Education that, apart from their importance for the reproduction of the labour force, are large sectors gathering self-employed and salaried employees.
• Hospitality–Tourism, focusing on large units, to which a section of employees is expected to relocate from the shrinking smaller enterprises in city centres.
• Wholesale and retail rade, in which a decline is expected but it will maintain a significant part of the employment and wage labour.

20. Based on all the above, in the following period special attention must be paid to:

• The specialization of our work in the salaried working women increasing in numbers (proportionally to men in sectors of the economy).
• The comprehensive political and trade union intervention in the issues of the working time, flexible labour relations, and teleworking.
• The appropriate elaboration of frameworks of struggle in sectors with higher wages than the average, exploiting the pressure exerted by the capital to reduce the average wage.
• The deployment of forces in relatively new sectors and subsectors presenting a dynamic growth trend (e-commerce, logistics, large-scale constructions etc.), by taking into account the internal restructuring of sectors and groups that the new investments in green growth and digital transformation will bring to the fore (e.g. Energy, Telecommunications, Mass Media).
• The improvement of our intervention in the sectors of Scientific–Technical services, Education and Culture, by also taking into account the specific issues of working as a freelance service provider.
• The improvement of our intervention planning in the large group of salaried employees working at small and very small enterprises.
• The specialization of our work in salaried immigrants.
• The planning of our multifaceted intervention in the unemployed and especially the long-term unemployed, the numbers of whom will increase.