Está aqui

Minimum wage will be increased in January, guarantees Left Bloc MP

The Council for Social Dialogue meets today to discuss the increase of minimum wage. Soeiro, Left Bloc MP, ensured that regardless of the outcome there will be an increase to 535€ by January 1st, as agreed.

The Prime Minister, António Costa, announced in the opening discussion of the government programme that minimum wage would be the only item discussed in today’s meeting of the Standing Council for Social Dialogue. The government proposal, included in the agreement signed with left-wing parties, is to progressively increase minimum wage to 600 euros over the government (it is currently at 505€, it will increase to 530€ in 2016, 557€ in 2017 and 580€ in 2018).

The president of the Confederation of Portuguese Enterprises has announced that he will propose in the meeting an increase to an amount lower than 530€. He did not specify what his proposal would be. Other employer organisations have not issued any statements. Of the two trade union confederations, UGT supports an increase to 535€ by 1st January 2016, and CGTP demands an increase to 600€, but admits that the most important thing is for it to increase.

However, José Soeiro, MP for the Left Bloc, has announced that regardless of the outcome of the Standing Council for Social Dialogue, minimum wage will increase according to the agreement, even if all employer associations refuse it. José Soeiro said yesterday in Parliament that “unlike what has happened in the past, now the consensus reached in the Standing Council for Social Dialogue will be respected. But neither the MPs nor the government will neglect their responsibilities, their word and their obligations – namely, the decision on the minimum wage amount, according to what has been established with the left-wing parties and written in the government programme”. The Left Bloc MP recalled former right-wing Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho’s decision in 2013, when he said the “wisest” measure to take in a country with high unemployment was to lower minimum wage, and not to increase it. “The poverty rate among workers is 10.7%, even higher for women. That means that one in every ten workers earns so little that, even with a job, they cannot leave the poverty line. The idea that economy and productivity problems would be solved with lower wages is not only petty and small. It is a wrong idea with no future”.

João Oliveira, the Communist Party MP, added that an increase of the minimum wage must be considered “in the broadest goal of increasing wages”. He added that “there is an urgent need to change the way wealth is distributed in our country, for each 100 euros of wealth created in the country only 37.8 is distributed in wages. Wealth needs to be distributed in a fairer way”. Oliveira added that, despite the agreement with the Socialist Party, to keep their electoral promises, the Communist Party handed a draft of a legislative resolution recommending that the government increase minimum wage to 600€ by January.

Termos relacionados English
(...)