Brazil’s President boasts higher salaries through collective bargaining

Last Updated on Friday, 1 March 2024, 12:26 by Denis Chabrol

Brazil’s President Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ Da Silva has highlighted that unionised workers in his country are earning increased wages and salaries as a result of collective bargaining.

“Eighty percent of the organised working class have managed to get collective bargaining agreements that are above inflation,” he said in remarks in the presence of President Irfaan Ali after they held bilateral talks.

Successive Guyana governments have over the years been criticised for not collectively bargaining with trade unions for wages and salaries. The Guyana Public Service Union has taken the government to court for violating Guyana’s Constitution,  laws and International Labour Organisation conventions by failing to engage in collective bargaining. Instead, governments have been awarding retroactive wage and salary increases in November of each year.

Guyana’s Attorney General Anil Nandlall on Thursday remarked that collective bargaining is not only about wages and salaries. “Collective bargaining is not confined to pay. Of course, they want pay talks and those were included in the menu of issues to be addressed. Collective bargaining is the generic term of bargaining on behalf of a collective. That’s what collective bargaining means. There is no great science behind the term collective bargaining. It is bargaining on behalf of a collective for a common set of issues,” he told reporters.

The Brazilian leader said his administration was restoring the social programmes that were successful in his party’s previous two terms.

Meanwhile top representatives of the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Teachers Union  began High Court-ordered mediation stemming from the absence of  negotiations on the union’s proposed multi-year agreement for salaries and allowances. That meeting began on Friday at about 10 am and was continuing up to about 12:25 pm.