By Carlos Seijas Meneses
Caracas (EFE) the US currency -reference in the country to set prices- up to 5.31 dollars, as a result of the devaluation of the local currency.
The fall in wages, in a country where almost everything -even gasoline- is charged in dollars, mainly affects public workers and pensioners -who receive the equivalent of a minimum wage per month-, who have starred in more than 1,500 protests since January, according to NGOs, to demand an increase in their income.
Although Venezuelan law establishes that the salary must cover basic household needs, a family of five needs at least $482.26 per month for their food expenses, according to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis of the Venezuelan Federation. of Teachers (Cendas-FVM), a reference in the absence of official figures.
Inequality
The economist and university professor Leonardo Vera told EFE that the last year has meant, “above all for public sector employees and for a large mass of pensioners and retirees”, who in Venezuela “add more than 5 million people”, a “very significant deterioration in the purchasing power of their income and in their living conditions”.
On the other hand, in the private sector, where “salary adjustments are more flexible”, it has been seen, “in the last two years, an improvement in salaries even in dollars”.
According to a recent study prepared by the Venezuelan Confederation of Industrialists (Conindustria), the average salary of a worker in the manufacturing sector rose from 130 to 170 dollars between the first and fourth quarters of last year, which represents an increase of 30%.
On the other hand, “the reality in the official sector”, which also includes “the educational sector, the health sector and the Armed Forces”, is that the “salary has not adjusted (…) for a year”, in a country where “inflation is still around 300% and 400% year-on-year.”
part of a strategy
In Venezuela, salary adjustments were very frequent until 2018, the year in which six increases were decreed, with which they added “no less than 47” since the arrival of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, in 1999, until then.
But since 2019, Vera explained, the Government has been implementing an “anti-inflation program” with various measures, including “repressing the salary, that is, avoiding salary adjustments as they had been taking place.”
“In Venezuela, for several years, salary adjustments were taking place every six months, even quarterly, (…) but they have tried to space out the period of salary adjustment,” he said.
Other measures that make up this “unannounced” official strategy have also consisted of stopping the rise in the official price of the dollar, in order to prevent products from becoming more expensive, and the contraction of credit, which is scarce in the country.
In Vera’s opinion, it would be advisable to establish a “progressive adjustment plan” to try that, over time, the salary “can get closer to that food basket” close to 500 dollars.
Although, in this context of constant devaluations and high inflation, the ideal would be to “mark the minimum wage in any other currency (…) to try to protect purchasing power.”
The Government, for its part, insists that the international sanctions imposed against the country -especially by the United States- have affected its ability to pay better wages and guarantee the rights of workers.
The Minister of Labor, Francisco Torrealba, recently stated, in the presentation of a report to the International Labor Organization (ILO), that Venezuela is a “besieged country with 923 unilateral coercive measures”, for which reason it works together with the Venezuelan Anti-Blockade Observatory to know its impact and the incidence on the minimum wage.