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The Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) opened to a “limited readjustment” of the minimum wage, but emphasized that this “it cannot be 1,500 pesos“.
This Tuesday the discussion of the project began in the Chamber of Deputies and Deputies, where the Government intends to increase the minimum wage by 1,500 pesos to cover only the CPI accumulated between March and August: there is no real readjustment due to the economic and labor crisis due to Covid-19.
In the Labor Commission of the Lower House, the president of the CUT, Barbara Figueroa, held that “We do not refuse a limited readjustment for this period, but it cannot be 1,500 pesos nor can it be thinking that this is one year. If it’s going to be like that, then let’s meet again in March. “
The Executive intends that in March only the CPI be applied again to negotiate again in mid-2021.
“It is unpresentable that we protect the backs, once again, of the entrepreneurs of our country“said Figueroa, launching, incidentally, a criticism of unemployed truckers:” There we have truckers who define themselves as SMEs and we all know that they have fleets of trucks that have them in the name of their families and that today they are blackmailing the Executive. We say no to those SMEs. “
While the Minister of Finance, Ignacio Briones, appealed to the comparison with the last years of the second administration of Michelle Bachelet.
“The average real readjustment that occurred in the last years of the previous administration was 1.3 percent, the average real readjustment in recent years in this administration -before this readjustment that we are proposing- generated a real growth rate of 2 , 9 percent, that is, more than double the previous one, “he stated.
The discussion in the lower house
For his part, the representative of the Coordinator of Trade Unions “Primera Línea Sindical”, Andrés Giordano explained that they cannot imagine “Minister Briones or Minister (of Labor, María José) Zaldívar living with 322 thousand pesos in a dignified way.”
This irritated the UDI deputy Patricio Melero, who asked him to be “more prudent, because when he gives examples he could also point out the salaries of the president of the CUT or the salary of the president of the College of Professors or the salary of ourselves parliamentarians.”
Giordano replied that Melero’s salary “is equivalent to more than 30 times the minimum wage.”
In his presentation, the UDI parliamentarian advocated building “a minimum income policy that, in my opinion, should immediately give the CPI, reinforce the Guaranteed Minimum Income and, thirdly, see a major readjustment in March next year. We have to deal with these situations and, therefore, the minimum wage must be realistic with the country’s situation“.
Parliamentarians can reject the proposal, but do not have the power to increase the figures, and the first of several votes that this project will have – which has immediate discussion – will take place this Wednesday in the Labor Commission of the Lower House.
