The coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda this Saturday considered the disparities between the high salaries of the TAP administration and the pay of its employees, who were targeted by cuts, unsustainable and pledged to fight these inequalities in the country.
This point of view was conveyed to journalists by Catarina Martins after a meeting with the management of the National Union of Civil Aviation Flight Personnel in Lisbon.
Bloco de Esquerda has a project to mandate that the government establish a reference salary range, defining a maximum salary gap between the highest and lowest pay at an employer.
For Catarina Martins, “no long-term manager could earn more in a month than an employee” of that same company “in a whole year” – pointing to TAP as “a maximum example” of gross wage inequality.
“TAP is a good example, as former Secretary of State Alexandra Reis, for example, earned 200 thousand euros in the middle of her term as administrator. [ano], this at the same time that the company’s employees were taking pay cuts. In Portugal, we have boards of directors that raise their salaries enormously, while cutting, freezing or insignificantly adjusting the salaries of their employees,” he criticized.
After classifying the high salary differentials in force at TAP as “unsustainable”, the coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda defended that in Portugal an administrator should not earn more in a month than his employee “in a whole decade”.
“The goal of Bloco de Esquerda is that no one can earn more in a month than an employee of the same company in a year. This goal can be achieved in stages,” he stressed.
With its degree, the Left Block bank intends that the reference salary scales “compelly apply to the public sector and public capital companies.”
With regard to the private sector, the aim is to use the law as a form of pressure “through the relationships the private sector establishes with the state in terms of public procurement, government policy support, including community funds, and tax benefits”.
“For example, private employers whose salary scale does not conform to the defined reference salary scale are denied the right to participate in auctions or public tenders, as well as to take advantage of any benefits or subsidies and support established in public support programs of companies and the creation of jobs and possible public funding, including European funds,” the diploma reads.
Between 2020 and 2021, according to data that served as the basis for this diploma, “directors of the most important listed companies earned on average 32 times more than employees in 2021”.
“But if we go to specific cases, the difference is much bigger. At Pingo Doce, the difference is 262.6 times between the remuneration of the administrator, Pedro Soares dos Santos, and the average wage of the company’s employees. Cláudia Azevedo , administrator of Last year, Sonae was paid 77.4 times more than the group’s workers. Gonçalo Moura Martins, executive chairman of Mota-Engil, earned more than 73 times the average wage of the other workers in the construction company,” it said. diploma from Left Block.
Source: DN
