The Government, specifically the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, and the Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Security, Raquel “Kelly” Olmos, intends to condition all the following joint meetings with unions and workers’ unions by putting a ceiling on the increases in advance for the sectors in their minimum wage.
According to the 2023 Budget project, presented by the economic portfolio last year and defended by both Massa and the president of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA), Miguel Pesce suggests that year-on-year inflation for the current year will be at 60%, so they try to impose that ceiling on the increases in minimum wage. Private consultants, for their part, are already announcing, according to their own projections, higher numbers in the consumer price index (CPI) than what is suggested by the State.
Only the Sarandí consultancy, chaired by Sergio Chouza, has a projection that barely comes close to what was speculated by the Government. The Sarandí number is 66% year-on-year inflation for 2023. Before even starting negotiations paritythe general secretary of the Autonomous Confederation of Workers of Argentina (CTA), Hugo Godoy, assured that “it is unrealistic” to demand a ceiling for the negotiations of increases in minimum wage.
“The Government is showing that it continues without setting limits to the lack of inflationary control, that the speculation of the great price makers continues, plus the measures imposed by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) that are clearly inflationary,” Godoy began with his criticism, and He added: “Stronger measures by the Government of each to the needs of workers continue to be essential, as we have been proposing since last year.”
And he ended by offering what he considers are the two reasons why it is not appropriate to set a ceiling for joint negotiations: “First, because they must be without conditions and without ceilings; second because It is already being verified that this year inflation will not be 60%, as the Government maintains ”. In this framework, the trade unionist demanded the convening of the Minimum, Vital and Mobile Wage Council.
Inflation accelerating again
After inflation finally fell to four as the initial number of the figure in November, corresponding to 4.9% that month, Sergio Massa’s management of the economic portfolio expressed being on the right track, although in the words of Massa himself, the number does not satisfy him.
Compared to previous months, with the November data, it was known that the inflationary curve began a deceleration, especially marked in a general increase in food of approximately 3.2%. However, the good news only lasted a month, due to the fact that Last December, the inflation figure published by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) was 5.1%. It is because of this data that the union leaders suggest that the price variation will be higher than that predicted by the Government.
