CGTP considers PM’s announcement of civil service salary review ‘very bad’

The Secretary General of the CGTP considered this Thursday that the Prime Minister’s announcement about the revision of civil service salary increases is “very bad”, stressing that the government has known inflation figures for 2022 since January.

“The announcement that was made is very bad, let’s see what happens, but the government has known since January what the value of inflation in 2022 was. It seems to have woken up now,” Isabelle Camarina said at the end. plenary meeting of the CGTP trade unions, which took place at the Voz do Operário in Lisbon.

According to the trade union leader, Prime Minister António Costa’s statement in Parliament on Wednesday, in which he expressed his readiness to review this year’s civil service wage increase, followed “an intense struggle that the workers have unleashed because they cannot continue work in poverty. “.

“All this struggle must have had some effect,” Isabel Camarinha stressed, referring in particular to the national strike organized by the United Front of Trade Unions of Civil Servants on the 17th and the CGTU national demonstration the following day in Lisbon. .

This year’s salary increase in the civil service “has been meager” and “does not even remotely guarantee a restoration of the purchasing power of these workers”, so “it is now expected that the government will present a proposal that raises wages and that also guarantees other rights,” he added. .

“We are following the announcements and propaganda that is being carried out around the results of the State Budget for 2022, the increase in revenues compared to expectations, now we will see how this is applied,” the leader of the inter-union union also emphasized.

For Isabel Camarinha, the wage review would have to be applied retroactively to January and be accompanied by price controls and taxation of “the gross profits that large economic and financial groups continue to generate.”

On Wednesday, the prime minister expressed readiness to revise the salaries of civil servants, noting that inflation in 2022 was higher than the government had originally forecast.

“Since we discovered a change in the prerequisites on the basis of which the agreements with the civil service were signed, [estamos disponíveis] talk to trade unions about the income of civil servants,” António Costa said during a general policy debate in Parliament in response to the PCR.

The head of the executive branch noted that when signing agreements on the salaries of civil servants in 2022, inflation was expected at the level of 7.4%.

“We know that the final inflation in 2022 was 7.8%, and therefore we are available for review, taking into account what the change concerns wages,” he stressed.

This year, in January, the base salary of civil servants increased from 705 euros to 761.58 euros, while employees earning up to about 2,600 euros gross received an increase of about 52 euros, and from this amount, an increase of about for 52 euros. , an upgrade of 2% with an average increase of 3.6%, according to the government.