New minimum wages likely to be announced next week

The government spokesperson on the CCT, Emídio Mavila, told reporters on Thursday that, inside the CCT’s working groups, the government only plays the role of observer.

The discussion of the numbers of any wage rise is undertaken between the employers, represented by the Confederation of Mozambican Business Associations (CTA), and the two union federations, the OTM and Consilmo. It is up to the Council of Ministers to publish the agreed figures.

Mavila believed agreement on the new minimum wages for the eight sectors of activity will be endorsed, and then submitted to the Council of Ministers, which is likely to approve them at its next meeting, scheduled for Tuesday.

Mavila was speaking in Maputo after a plenary session of the CCT. The main item on the CCT agenda was analysis of the agreements on minimum wages by sector.

The OTM representative, André Mandlate, said that, despite the consensus between the parties, the unions are not satisfied, because the results fall below their expectations.

The building of consensus, he said, is based technically on the fight to recover the purchasing power lost last year. The unions were thus struggling to ensure that the new wages are not lower than the existing ones.

The minimum wages, said Mandlate, are “reference wages”. Thus, nobody can be paid less than the minimum wage, but workers can fight, in each workplace, through collective bargaining, to secure higher wages.

CTA representative Paulino Cossa said the consensus reached in the negotiations meant there was an understanding between the employers and the workers, and that the decision took into account the real performance of the companies.

Protecting the rights of workers, he said, must start by maintaining their jobs.

In the 2022 negotiations, the minimum wages rose by between 4.5 and 7.5 per cent.

(AIM)