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Muhammad Wahba wrote in “Al-Akhbar”: More than a year has passed since the collapse of the exchange rate of the lira against the dollar. The value of the lira declined against the dollar by 79%, while the value of the dollar against the lira more than doubled by 395%. As for price inflation, it was very high. During last August, prices registered a total increase of 120% compared to August 2019. Within this increase, the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 367% and clothing and footwear by 413%. Regardless of the details of these indicators issued by the Central Administration of Statistics, they contain an unequivocal indication of the deterioration of the livelihoods of Lebanese residents and the loss of their wages in search of basic and necessary food and clothing for their children and shoes. On average, the accumulated price increase during the first eight months of the current year reached 58%, which means that if someone were paid a million pounds, their value would be 420 thousand pounds. In other words, the minimum wage was lowered to 283,500 pounds!
As for the statistics of the National Social Security Fund, it indicates the magnitude of the disaster that affected wage earners in Lebanon. Of the 415,000 salaried employees declared for social security, 16.5% earn the minimum wage, 37.5% earn less than 900,000 LBP (it has become the equivalent of 378,000 LBP) and 11.8% earn less than 1.1 million LBP ( now The equivalent of 638 thousand lire). In all, 86% of workers who claim to be insured earn less than 3 million pounds. These categories were crushed by the collapse of the exchange rate and price inflation that resulted from the expansion of the Central Bank of Lebanon in the issuance of cash before it decided, after months of this policy, to consolidate the contraction of the economy, That will have huge repercussions on employment. That is, after crushing wages and impoverishment, work began crushing wage earners and making them unemployed, seeking immigration if they managed to get there.
Faced with these facts, the General Union of Workers, led by a “handful” of party representatives, has no choice but to loosen the hand of the president of the union, Bechara Al-Asmar, who recently returned to the presidency of the federation after to be pardoned by the authorities of the sects, to exert pressure together with the economic bodies, to form a Government. First, the union can be short and does not allow you to delve into issues such as wages and workers. The issues related to the formation of the government are at the center of its being and its political-functional representation.
In this context, the Federation summoned its colleagues from the Union Coordination Committee, and its operators among the heads of the bodies to hold a joint meeting under the roof of a requirement: the formation of the government. None of those who participated in the meeting mentioned the word “salary” or “salary” or any equivalent word or phrase.
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