Education Minister Andreas Loverdos seems ready to go against government policy as he refuses to lay off any university administrative staff. Loverdos said that an evaluation report of staff requirements in tertiary education showed that universities have less administrative staff than they need. The Minister, who asked for the report to be carried out, said this means that none of the 1,050 employees who were placed in a public sector mobility scheme last fall should be dismissed. “The results of the evaluation report were only made available to me today,” he noted. “I had said from the start that there needs to be an evaluation and that its results should determine whether there should be any layoffs. There can be no other rule. Since the evaluation shows that there is no need for layoffs, noone will be laid off.” The private evaluation report indicated that Greece’s eight state universities need 4,086 administrative employees against the 3,630 who are currently employed. It also showed that the ratio of administrative staff to students in Greece is much lower than the European Union average. Earlier this summer, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Government Vice-President Evangelos Venizelos had decided to immediately proceed with a call of tender and hiring of 600 university administrative employees. Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Loverdos had disagreed over how many university administrative employees should be rehired after being placed in a labor reserve last year, with the remainder being dismissed. Loverdos supported that the government should rehire as many as 880 of the staff but Mitsotakis insisted that no more than 500 could be taken back. Venizelos did not side with Loverdos’ comments earlier in the day that there will be no administrative staff layoffs in universities and clarified that the evaluation report must be studied closely before rushing to decisions.
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