The Government announced that it will convene the Minimum Wage Council to define an increase that ‘beats inflation’

The Chief of Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero, announced this Thursday that the objective of the national government is to csummon the Salary Council in April Vital and Mobile Minimum (SMVM) to speed up the definition of the next increases.

“We think that with a month of work or a month and a half we will be able to reconvene the national salary council and there we will end up being able to close an increase, which I insist, For our philosophy, wages have to beat inflation“Cafiero said in statements to C5N.

The chief of ministers remarked that the intention is to start working next week in the meetings that they will hold with representatives of the unions and the business sector to reach an agreement on prices and salaries that allows reinforcing the macroeconomic strategy with which the House Rosada tries to contain the march of inflation.

“We are going to start working next week to try to reach that consensus quickly,” insisted Cafiero and acknowledged that the idea is to speed up the rise in the minimum wage because, he recalled, that indicator impacts many social programs.

In this regard, the Minister of Social Development, Daniel Arroyo, had said that 760,000 beneficiaries of social plans receive half the minimum wage.

Cafiero stressed that “the Salary Council is a very important institute because an agreement is reached between the State, the representatives of the workers and the employers” to set the minimum wage income.

In 2020, the SMVM achieved a rise of 22%, against an inflationary race that amounted to 36.1 percent, according to official Indec measurements. In nominal terms, in one year it went from 16,875 pesos for monthly workers to $ 20,587.50. It represents an end-to-end loss of 14.1%.

If to this real fall in the minimum wage during the first year of Alberto Fernández’s administration is added the 24.4% decline that he had during the four years of Macri’s administration, the collapse of the living and mobile minimum wage (SMVM) would accumulate a loss of 32% in five years.

For now, in March the SMVM should increase again to jump to $ 21,600, as established by Resolution 4/2020 of the Ministry of Labor that was published on October 16 in the Official Gazette.

In recent days, the national government began to emphasize that the vocation is that this year revenues exceed the price march, a situation that generated doubts among the main union leaders.

Specifically, the intention of the Casa Rosada is that salaries end in 2021 with an advance of “two or three points” above inflation, but in the CGT itself they raised concerns, fundamentally, about the reheating recorded by food values in the last months of last year and in January.

This situation has put into question the projection of the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, on the progress of inflation in 2021. As reflected in the Budget, prices are expected to accumulate a jump of 29%, although the unions do not rule out that this figure is left behind.

DS

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source https://pledgetimes.com/the-government-announced-that-it-will-convene-the-minimum-wage-council-to-define-an-increase-that-beats-inflation/