Maputo, 24 Mar (AIM) – Mozambican Labour Minister Margarida Talapa, on Friday called for a “fair balance” between wage rises and the need to maintain and create jobs.
Talapa thus repeated an old claim by employers all over the world that there is some kind of trade-off between wage rises and jobs – that workers should moderate their wage demands or risk losing their jobs.
She was speaking in Maputo at the opening of the first session this year of the Consultative Labour Commission (CCT), the tripartite negotiating forum between the government, the trade unions and the employers’ associations.
Negotiations at the CCT pave the way for the annual increases in the statutory minimum wages. There is no longer any national minimum wage – instead the minimum wage is negotiated sector by sector.
“We want to find a fair balance between the need for adjusting wages and the creation and maintenance of jobs”, Talapa said.
During the CCT negotiations, there is no need for “extreme positions of radicalization”.
“We urge the minimum wage negotiating teams, and the leaderships of the organizations, both of the employers and of the workers, to ensure that the negotiations take place in an environment of fraternity, calm and discretion”, she stressed.
Talapa also appealed to employers to promote “dignified work”, permanent dialogue with the workers, and collective bargaining.
She also urged the use of extra-judicial mechanisms to solve labour disputes. In 2003, she added, 8,006 cases were mediated at the Labour Mediation and Arbitration Centres. Of these, 6,972 had a peaceful outcome through the signing of agreements between the parties to the dispute.
But the other 1,034 cases ended in deadlock.
For his part, the Chairperson of the Confederation of Mozambican Business Associations (CTA), Agostinho Vuma, urged pragmatism in the discussions on the minimum wage, and in interpreting the macro-economic data that will be presented to the CCT by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Vuma admitted that the macro-economic data indicate an improvement in the economic growth rate and relative price stability in 2023.
But there had been poor performance in “traditional sectors” of the economy, such as manufacturing, which had shrunk by 4.4 per cent, and the building industry where there had been a decline of 3.3 per cent, compared with 2022.
Economic growth was only positive, he argued, because of the enormous contribution made by the extractive industry.
(AIM)
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