Province dismisses ATE wage hike demand

Buenos Aires province Labour Minister Oscar Cuartango yesterday described the ATE state workers union request for a 48 percent wage hike as “unfeasible,” calling for “moderation” from the union leaders and for them to refrain from generating “exaggerated expectations.”

The Buenos Aires province ATE Secretary-General, Oscar de Isasi, had anticipated on Monday that the union would demand this steep increase at the next wage bargaining negotiations but Cuartango considered such a request to be beyond the fiscal capacity of the province.

The minister said he claimed to “understand the legitimate ambitions of the workers but the union leadership must” be reasonable “and not generate expectations... outside the realm of possibility,” although he refrained from revealing a rough estimate of what the Daniel Scioli administration would counter-offer.

De Isasi justified the 48 percent increase demand on “mathematical” analysis of the lost purchasing power of workers as a consequence of inflation, and also anticipated the demand for an end to “under-the-table” salaries, “the elimination of a ceiling for family benefits and the incorporation of bonuses paid to education and health auxiliary workers into basic pay.”

Cuartango also confirmed that wage bargaining with the provincial teachers’ Union Front will begin next Monday.

Herald with DyN, Ambito.com