[ad_1]
The economist Francisca Guedes de Oliveira considers that it is not acceptable to have “companies that only survive if they pay 500 euros” to employees, observing the permanence of a discourse contrary to the evolution of the quality of life of the most vulnerable.
In an interview with Lusa, the professor from the Catholic University of Porto said that in Portugal there is still “the idea that it is acceptable that we have companies that only survive if they pay 500 euros to people”.
“I think this is not acceptable,” he emphasized, and taking as an example the increase in the national minimum wage in negotiation for the State Budgets for 2021, he considered that “it cannot be done, with the argument of the crisis and with the argument of the difficulties that we are all feeling, dropping things like the valuation of the minimum wage, the valuation of social benefits ”, or even public investment, especially in health and education.
According to the academic, improving the living conditions of the most vulnerable groups of the population is what will generate “resilience and resistance for the future”, since there is still “a mass of the population that does not have the minimum and does not have ability to resist when things get tense as they have been.
According to Francisca Guedes de Oliveira, there is still a vision “that looks at this as if maintaining a certain range of the population at certain minimums was not a problem.”
“It is something that I cannot fully understand”, he confesses and adds that in crises “the victims are systematically the same.”
“It is a lack of dignity at work that I cannot understand. That this is acceptable in a society like ours is absolutely incomprehensible to me ”, he added.
According to the economist, income has “to do with the dignity of people and the way we treat people”, as well as “with the basic values of the country and what the country can take on in the future.”
“If we raise the bar for those down here, I am absolutely sure that such resilience, resilience, the ability to endure when the next crisis comes, will come,” he said.
Recognizing that the discourse “more to the right” -which tends to defend that companies, by guaranteeing jobs, protect people- “is not malicious”, the university professor understands that this “is a completely wrong point of view. and distorted “. ”.
“It is to think that it is approached and that the conjunctural problems are solved by looking at the supply side,” contested Francisca Guedes de Oliveira.
According to the economist, the resolution is on the demand side, and “on all types of demand, particularly domestic, domestic consumption and private consumption”, also highlighting that “private consumption increases more in relatively lower income”.
The Catholic professor also defended that the minimum wage and social benefits “cannot be instruments of competitiveness.”
“They have to be instruments to guarantee a type of life, dignity of life and survival capacity, which has to be more than survival for people,” he defended.
However, the economist says that in terms of increases, in Portugal, “everything has to be done with common sense and according to our reality”, since “we are not going to become Switzerland.”
“It must be done in the context of what the Portuguese social, economic and business reality is,” he developed, adding that his reasoning is not about “verifying that minimum wages are doubled and unemployment benefits are doubled.”
When mentioning that in governmental terms, over the years, “what can be done” in terms of the minimum wage, pensions and “in the form and amount of some of the unemployment benefits attributed to it”, the economist stressed that “you can never stop doing it.”
Francisca Guedes de Oliveira also recognized that the increases are usually “miserably low values”, since both in pensions and in the minimum wage “the starting point is very low.”
“These are very low increases, increases that are still insufficient to achieve such a structure that I think we must have in the population, which then resists these crises,” he concluded.
The academic was also in favor of the homogenization of a minimum wage at the European Union level, given that “we are not talking about leveling the Portuguese value”, but about “raising the bar and leveling up.”
[ad_2]
