The collective bargaining nominal wage increases of 6.4% recorded in April failed to stem the erosion caused by inflation. Thus, and excluding the impact of rising prices, the annual average pay update suffered a real loss of 1.4%, versus an inflation variation of 7.9% calculated over 14.2 months from last month. A scenario that worsened after the evolution of salaries stagnated in March at 0.4%, according to the latest reports from the Directorate General for Employment and Labor Relations (DGERT).
Data for April refers to collective agreements whose salary changes were applied for an average of 14.2 months, for a universe of 95,930 employees, representing 23% of the total of 415.5 thousand employees covered by collective agreements last month, according to the DGERT study on “Instruments for collective labor regulation and average change in conventional wages in April”.
Jobs in the information and communication and education sectors were most affected, with wage losses of 6.3% and 3.2% respectively.
Taking into account the evolution of collective bargaining salaries by sector and the respective inflationary variation, it seems that the area of information and communication activities has been most disadvantaged, with a real wage fall of 6.3%, i.e. already discounted the impact of the price increase of 8.1%. 6,280 workers were affected in this industry, representing 6.5% of the 95,930 who saw wage changes implemented in their collective bargaining agreements in April.
The education sector was the one to record the second largest real wage loss, falling 3.2% to just 176 employees, against industry inflation of 7.6%. Then come the manufacturing sectors which, despite a price increase of 8.3%, recorded an average real wage reduction of 1.8%, affecting 46 981 employees, equivalent to almost half (48.9%) of staff with salary updates, in April, in its collective regulatory toolbox. In the transport and warehousing sector, 5370 employees, 5.6% of the total, felt real wages fall by 1.7% against industry inflation of 7.7%.
Accommodation, catering and the like, with a 0.7% decrease in salaries, sanitation, water distribution, sanitation and waste management, with a 0.2% decrease in wages, and other service activities, with wages down 0 .1%, they complete the list of sectors in which wages rose below inflation, leading to real losses.
Only human health and social support activities, with 644 employees impacted by salary changes, and the industry that merges wholesale and retail trade and the repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, impacting 21,056 employees, achieved variation positive wage growth, albeit with very weak, of 0.7% and 0.6% respectively. That is, in these cases, the evolution of fees practically stagnated, according to the same DGERT report.
Analyzing salary developments throughout 2022, the picture is more encouraging, as there was a real increase of 3.9%, already excluding the impact of inflation, and a nominal increase of 5.5% compared to the previous year.
Telework contracts will skyrocket in 2022
The law regulating teleworking, which came into effect last year, has already had consequences for collective bargaining. For example, the number of agreements governing the remote working regime shot up to 27 in 2022 compared to the six verified in the previous year. That is, there was a 350% increase in collective agreements that now provide for that work regime, according to the annual report on the evolution of collective bargaining in 2022, prepared by the Labor Relations Center of the Department of Labor and presented yesterday. But only ten conventions stipulate that “the costs associated with the purchase/use of equipment and computer or telematics systems necessary for the functioning of the telework place, as well as the payment of additional energy costs, meal subsidy, must be borne by the employer” , according to the same study.
Concerns about the regulation of teleworking are particularly apparent “in the financial, insurance, transport and trade sectors,” revealed Cláudia Madaleno, scientific coordinator of the Center for Labor Relations and co-author of the study, along with Paula Agapito, executive coordinator of that body Ministry of Labour.
The number of collective regulatory tools, which offer workers more pay and benefits in light of the Labor Act, increased significantly last year, with the coverage rate surpassing pre-pandemic (2019) levels, the same report said.
In 2022, 855,998 thousand workers were covered by collective agreements, an increase of 219,757 or 34.5% compared to the 636,241 workers potentially covered in 2021. covid-19, when approximately 800,000 were covered by collective agreements.
If we look at the evolution since 2010, it appears that in that first year of the statistical analysis, about 1.4 million workers were covered by these instruments, a significantly higher number than in 2022. That is to say, despite the positive evolution, Portugal is still far from pre-troika levels.
Collective regulatory instruments rose from 394 to 505, “the third best year in the series” starting in 2010, before the troika arrives in Portugal, Paula Agapito, of the Center for Labor Relations, stressed while presenting the study. This is “an increase of 28% and shows that it was possible to return to the level of 2019, both in terms of collective bargaining tools and in terms of the workers potentially covered”, emphasized the Minister of Labor, Ana Mendes Godinho .
Source: DN
