Mozambique: Unions accuse employers of avoiding wage negotiations

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Unions accuse employers of avoiding wage negotiations

8:15 CAT | 24 Jun 2021

File photo

Mozambican trade unionists have accused the country’s employers of deliberately avoiding any discussion about wage rises.

Cited in Wednesday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, Alexandre Munguambe, the general secretary of the country’s largest trade union federation, the OTM (Mozambican Workers’ Organisation ), accused the employers of reneging on their promise to discuss raising the minimum wage in June.

Minimum wages are usually negotiated annually, sector by sector, in the Labour Consultative Commission (CCT), which is a tripartite negotiating forum between the government, the trade unions and the employers.

The 2020 negotiations began on 18 March that year, but the Covid-19 pandemic was used as an excuse to stop the talks – which means that there will be no rise in the minimum wage until further notice. In previous years, an increase in the minimum wage was usually announced in late April and was always backdated to 1 April.

Earlier this year, the government and the employers’ main association, the CTA, led the unions to believe that the suspended wage talks could resume in June. But there is just one week to go before the end of June, and there is no sign of the CCT resuming its work.

Indeed, on 16 June, at a Maputo press conference, the CTA deputy chairperson, Vasco Manhica, made it clear that the employers want the wage freeze to continue indefinitely. He claimed that anything that could increase company costs, such as raising the minimum wage, “could interrupt the recovery effort and compromise the survival of companies”.

Like employers all over the world, he argued that the top priority was to keep workers in employment, rather than to increase their wages.

Munguambe pointed out that the CTA is breaking the agreement that the wage negotiations would resume in June. But instead of negotiating with the unions and the government, the CTA had been making unilateral statements about how it would be “inopportune” to discuss raising the minimum wage, because the conditions that dictated suspension of the CCT talks in 2020 are still in effect.

“We aren’t going to reply to them, because we want to discuss the matter in the proper place”, said Munguambe. “We are not going to discuss it in the press. They have to sit down with us”.

Asked what approach the unions would take at the tripartite meeting, assuming it happens, Munguambe would not go into details, but said “we expect wages to be adjusted”.

The fact that there have been no wage rises since 2019, he added, had worsened the already difficult living conditions of Mozambican workers.

In 2019 the OTM argued that, to provide a basic basket of goods and services for an average family, a minimum monthly wage of 19,600 meticais (297 US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time), would have been needed. In 2020, the cost for the same basket, according to the OTM, would be 22,700 meticais a month.

But the monthly minimum wages agreed when the CCT met in 2019 came nowhere near 19,600 meticais. They ranged from 4,266 meticais for fishery workers on Lake Cahora Bassa in Tete province, to 12,760 meticais for workers in banking, insurance and other financial services. The minimum wage for public sector workers was just 4,467 meticais a month.

The wage freeze that the employers now insist on mean that workers are becoming poorer by the day, contradicting the government’s drive to reduce poverty.

Source: AIM