Mozambique: May Day celebrations low key, as wages stagnate

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Mozambique: May Day celebrations low key, as wages stagnate

7:10 CAT | 03 May 2021

Photo: O País

For the second year running, the celebrations of International Workers’ Day, 1 May, were a low key affair in Mozambique, since the social distancing required in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, ensured that the traditional trade union marches and rallies could not be held.

Nonetheless, leaders of the country’s main trade union federation, the OTM (Mozambican Workers’ Organisation) took advantage of the date to demand a resumption of negotiations on raising the minimum wage.

Up until 2020, the minimum wage by sector was discussed between the government, the trade unions and the employers’ bodies in the first quarter of the year, in a tripartite forum known as the Labour Consultative Council (CCT). But the 2020 negotiations were abruptly suspended in February 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country.

Hence the minimum wages have remained frozen at their 2019 level for the past two years. According to the National Statistics Institute (INE), inflation in 2020 was 3.52 per cent – and this year it has speeded up. Inflation in the first quarter of 2021 was 3.42 per cent. Thus in real terms, wages are falling, and poverty is increasing.

The main celebrations on May Day this year were held in the northern city of Nampula, where the OTM General Secretary, Alexandre Munguambe, demanded that the minimum wage negotiations should resume.

While wages were frozen “we have had two years of successive increases in the prices of goods and services, which have worsened the cost of living for workers”, Munguambe said. “As representatives of the workers, we shall remain committed to the negotiations of the minimum wages taking place, and bringing concrete results”.

Increases in the minimum wages are normally backdated to 1 April in the year the negotiations occur. But this time, the OTM wants the increases backdated to April 2020.

The likelihood of the employers agreeing to this is close to zero. As with employers all over the world, Mozambican businesses try to pit wages against jobs, claiming that increased wages will lead to fewer jobs.

Labour Minister Margarida Talapa said that in May analysis of the economic situation would begin “so that in June the Consultative Commission can meet”. It was the CCT that would take the definitive decision on any wage rise “and so I am not going to make any promises now”, she added.

According to the OTM, Covid-19 threw 57,000 Mozambican workers out of their jobs. But most of this unemployment was temporary and, as the economic situation has brightened somewhat this year, about 50,000 of these workers have gone back to their jobs.

Source: AIM