Bernardo Rojas, the president of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT-A), one of the five main trade unions in the country, said that the jump this year was to make up for the steady depreciation in wages over the past 20 years.
The unions also believe that the government may be susceptible to pressure thanks to the 14.5% GDP growth, on the back of a bumper soya harvest, in 2010.
Rojas further argues that such a thumping increase is justified on economic and moral grounds. On economic grounds the argument is that poor people tend to spend more of their wages so a boost in wages feeds immediately through the rest of the economy. On moral grounds the argument is that the poor have lower savings and are generally more vulnerable to any economic downturn, so paying them more helps families stay together.
The trade unions promote the creation of an Instituto Nacional del Salario because they consider the Consejo Nacional de Salarios Mínimos too bureaucratic to be effective. They would like the minimum wage to be automatically indexed to inflation. Now indexation only kicks in if inflation breaches 10%.
The trade unions also want the number of items in the inflation index cut from 450 to between 70 and 150, and for price controls to be introduced on 20 basic household products.
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