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In an interview with Lusa, the professor at 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 giving as an example the increase in the national minimum wage in negotiation for the State Budgets for 2021, he considered that “It is not possible, with the argument of the crisis and with the argument of the difficulties that we are all feeling, to drop things like the assessment of the minimum wage, the assessment of social benefits”, or even public investment, especially in health and education.
According to the academic, improving the living conditions of the most vulnerable sectors of the population will generate “resilience and resistance for the future.”, because there is still “a mass of the population that does not have the least and does not have the capacity to resist when things are tightened as they were.”
“The income has to do” with the dignity of the people and the way we treat people, “as well as” with the fundamental values of the country and what the country can handle in the future.
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, adding that in crises “the victims are systematically the same.”
“It is a lack of dignity for work that I cannot understand. That this is acceptable in a society like ours, for me it is absolutely incomprehensible,” he added.
Second to economist, income is “about the dignity of people and the way we treat people”, as well as “with the country’s base values and what the country can handle in the future.”
“If we raise the bar for those who are here, I am absolutely sure that this resilience, resilience, ability to endure when the next crisis comes, will come,” he said.
Recognizing that the discourse of “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 point of view completely wrong 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 “in all types of demand, in particular domestic demand, domestic consumption and private consumption.”, also highlighting that “private consumption increases more in relatively lower income”.
“The minimum wage and social benefits must be instruments to guarantee a way of life, the dignity of life and survival, which must be more than the survival of people”
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 himself.
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 a context of what the Portuguese social, economic and business reality is,” he developed, adding that there is no question of “thinking that the minimum wage will double and unemployment benefits will double.”
Recognizing that in government terms, over the years, “what has been done” can be done in terms of minimum wages, 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 considered 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.”
