Today's statement by Galab Donev about the package of austerity measures deserves analysis. There is one undeniably good step. The intention to "unleash" the automatic mechanisms for salary increases for those who earn the most at the highest levels of power. Not that it will fix the budget much, but for years the entire public sector has been subjected to unfair attacks because of a 5-6% administrative elite at the top. Hundreds of thousands of conscientious doctors, teachers, social workers and civil servants in the field, who have not stopped pulling the cart forward, suffered because of their five-figure salaries. Starting with the cuts from the top is an act of delayed justice.
This was written on "Facebook" by Lyuboslav Kostov, Chief Economist at the Confederation of Bulgarian Trade Unions.
But here comes the big "BUT". In the minister's statement, there remained a dangerous zone of silence around another automatism - that of the Minimum Wage (MW) in Art. 244 of the Labor Code. Pushing ideas for "freezing" or revising this legal mechanism under the pretext of budget discipline would be an absolute disaster.
People with the lowest incomes do not have the luxury of saving. They spend every euro on food, medicine and bills. Against the backdrop of a state budget of tens of billions, savings are literally crumbs.
To claim that the MW "strains" budget, is economic demagogy. If the minimum wage is touched upon in this whole "mish-mash" now, it will be nothing more than a wink to business. And to that business that uses the cheap price of labor as an advantage. Not to mention that the growth of the minimum wage in our country correlates positively with the growth of employment. In short, when the minimum wage grows, people join the labor market.
So far, there is no understanding between the social partners on this topic, because business will always want cheap labor. But the state should be an arbiter of justice, not an accomplice in poverty. For now, I'm just marking it. I hope I'm wrong and imagining it.