CGD announced this Thursday an extraordinary payment, in December, of 900 euros to workers with a monthly income of up to 1,500 euros and of 600 euros for those earning between 1,500 and 2,700 euros, to mitigate the effects of inflation.
In a statement, the Executive Committee of Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) also says it will allow workers to advance up to 50% of the Christmas allowance or receive it entirely in twelfths in the first half of 2023. increase in bonuses and incentives, payable next year.
Negotiations with the unionsThese measures are intended to respond to the “unusual rise in inflation”, which CGD says has had “abnormal effects on the disposable income of its employees, especially those who live in lower-paid households”.
According to CGD, all regular remuneration items and the meal allowance are taken into account when calculating the extraordinary payment in December.
“The Executive Committee understands that today Caixa is better prepared to face the difficult times we are going through and that its employees play a fundamental role in serving Portuguese families and businesses, continuing to pay attention to their remuneration, especially those who are most vulnerable. In this period we are going through”.
Earlier this morning, the CGD Group Companies Workers Union (STEC) had already announced that in December CGD would make an extraordinary payment of 600 to 900 euros for employees with a monthly income of up to 2,700 euros and the anticipation of receiving the Christmas allowance for 2023.
In a statement, the union said Caixa showed at a meeting on Wednesday “an opening to discuss support measures to be taken to help workers respond to the “brutal” rises in the cost of living and advanced with an extraordinary payment.
“So we positively register this decision by the administration and we only regret the delay, while other banks and even many smaller companies had already done this,” said the STEC.
The union says CGD claims that over the past four years (from 2018 to 2021), salary increases attributed by the company were equal to or greater than inflation, “slyly forgetting to take into account the Bank of Portugal’s inflation forecast for 2022 (7.8%) and taking into account the average increase in the salary scale achieved at the beginning of this year (0.92%), still at a time when no one could have foreseen this overwhelming increase in inflation”.
According to the union, workers and retirees are now facing “a brutal reduction in their purchasing power, far greater than any wage increase granted in previous years”.
Therefore, STEC warns that “it will not waive the fact that the negotiations on the salary scale for 2023 will undo this undeniable and significant loss of purchasing power, recognizing employees as a decisive asset for the operation, image and results of the public bank”.
STEC announced Monday that it had asked the executive chairman of CGD for an urgent meeting to request support in the face of rising inflation.
At the time, STEC considered the “silence” of the CCG administration – “the largest, most credible and most profitable bank in the country” – “unqualified and deafening” in the face of “galloping inflation, the obscene rise in the cost of living , ‘tightening the belt’ and the difficulty of acquiring many essential goods”.
CGD today presents its results for the first nine months of 2022.
News updated at 12:29
Source: DN
