The Minister of Labor Kelly Olmos He referred to the most recent inflation data, which stood at 6.0% in January, and maintained that “inflation must be broken” so that wages are not “behind.”
In this sense, the official He remarked that, in case of not meeting the inflationary expectation, the unions will be summoned to the reopening of parities, as happened last year, in the midst of a sharp rise in prices, as he explained. Kelly Olmos.
“From the Ministry of Labor we promote the reopening of paritiesthat allowed us to end the year making the registered jobs, which are the ones that the joint negotiations impact, remain half a point below inflation,” he explained. Kelly Olmos in statements for El Destape Radio.
He also argued that “these same parities had a projection for the first three months of the year, which allowed the salaries registered in the month of January to have a 6.5% update,” he said.
However, the minister stressed that unfortunately the high inflation rate has prevented the purchasing power of workers from recovering, on which she argued that the most important thing is “to be able to break inflation” so that there is a recovery of wages.
In this regard, he stressed that from the Government “we have a commitment not to reduce, in the fight against inflation, neither the capacity to generate employment, nor use the humblest as adjustment variables.”
That is why he considered that parities are the appropriate mechanism to recover income, “What would be the structural mechanism for this? For us it is parity, the strengthening of the union organization and its negotiation capacity. I see that the unions in general fight fully to the maximum they can get.”
In this context, he stressed that if the high inflationary pressure is not broken, the Government will convene each of the sectors so that there is a reopening of joint ventures, and thus wages do not fall below the price index.
Kelly Olmos ruled out a lump sum payment
Since last year, different sectors have proposed the payment of a fixed sum to workers to compensate for the loss of purchasing power, compared to what the minister expressed: “We have used it when we came out of long processes of non-existence of parity.”
And he added that if the fixed sum is implemented “We take power away from salary negotiation and it will not improve purchasing power”Therefore, it considered that this is not the solution to improve the income of workers.
