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Caracas.- Venezuelan workers continue to wait for the government of Nicolás Maduro to implement measures to set a new minimum salary that does not disappear following a few months.
During the month of January alone, 178 labor conflicts were registered, mostly involving public administration workers who demand better wages, the minimum of which remains at 130 bolivars or 5.3 dollars per month.
The tripartite meeting held two weeks ago on the island of Margarita with delegates sent by the International Labor Organization (ILO) did not come to define a new income.
However, it was agreed to establish a technical body to set the method with which it is expected to define the new income of workers. Given this, the spokesmen of the trade union centrals propose a emergency salary. But is it feasible?
Why is an emergency salary not possible?
The Vice Minister for the Integrated System of Labor Inspection and Social Security, of the Ministry of Labour, Rosalia Zingaleshe explained in an interview he gave to Last Newsthat an emergency salary is not possible in the legal framework and that it would also mean a setback.
Minimum wage increase: what amounts have been proposed?
“The term emergency salary is associated with the suspension of benefits. That is, a emergency salary without incidence in social benefits. Technically it is a setback for the workers”, he pointed out.
He explained that if they are established, the workers will receive a higher income, but when they retire, or are resting or for any other reason, they will have nothing. «You cannot condition the minimum wage consultation to the modification of the existing legal framework“, he insisted.
Who will integrate the technical table on salary?
The spokesperson for the Ministry of Labor clarified that since the government of Nicolás Maduro there is no proposal for a salary increase and that if there were, it would already be public. In addition, she informed that the first meeting of the technical table that will define the method to set the new salary will be on February 16, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Labor.
«The method is what we have to build and for that the technical instance. This technical instance is a group of people representing the three sectors, who are going to meet, making use of the ILO’s technical support, to determine the method”, he explained.
The instance will be made up of regarding thirty people from the three actors: the Government, workers and employers.
Regarding the method to set a new minimum wage, Rosalía Zingales indicated that must adapt to the situation and be dynamic; that there must be at least one consultation per year and that, depending on the moment, more consultations might be made before the end of the first quarter.
He explained that the method cannot be overestimated and that it does not include a mechanism to control the inflationary spiral and speculation.
“That goes beyond the method itself. One of the elements that some of the actors place in the discussion is that the minimum wage proposal must be accompanied by economic policies to compensate. For the Government there are elements that escape the natural dynamics of the impact of a wage increase on the economy.
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