The number of main power utility PPC workers who will not remain with the Megalopoli and Meliti facilities included in the utility’s bailout-required sale of lignite units are expected to be limited to no more 150. These staff members will either need to be absorbed by other PPC units or offered voluntary retirement programs.

Genop, the power utility’s main union, plans to discuss the matter with PPC officials at a meeting today.

The labor plan being discussed entails including 1,100 staff members of 1,250 currently stationed at the Megalopoli unit to one of two subsidiaries, carrying assets in the south, to be offered to investors.

All labor matters need to be resolved before accounting issues concerning PPC’s disinvestment of lignite units are endorsed at a meeting scheduled for May 23.

According to Greek law, all staff members who are transferred to the two PPC subsidiaries – respectively representing utility assets in the north and south – will need to remain employed for a period of at least six years following the sale.

A new collective labor agreement between PPC and Genop is expected to be signed within the next few days. All pending issues concerning this agreement appear to have been resolved, as was noted at a meeting yesterday between Genop and energy ministry officials.

A Genop demand has been met for the nullification of a term in the sale’s legislation that would have required severance payments for dismissed workers at PPC or the new subsidiaries to be factored into a lump sum offered as additional compensation by social security funds.

It has been agreed to offer, from now on, any outgoing PPC workers, dismissed or retiring, the entire lump sum plus severance pay of 15,000 euros.

Results of a related PPC study show that lump-sum payment costs for workers at PPC and the subsidiaries will amount to respective sums of 102 million and 164 million euros, which will burden 2Q results in 2018.