With this salary increase, the INDEC measurement for the first quarter, which was 21.7 percent, is exceeded. It will be settled in a single installment.
By Alejandro DiBiasi
20/04/2023 – 21,20hs
With unbridled inflation, most unions have decided to adopt the quarterly parities as a fundamental tool to sustain the purchasing power of income. Anticipating these times, who incorporated this modality since 2010 is the leadership of the Automotive Transport Mechanics and Allied Union (SMATA), which closed a 21.85% increase for April, May and June.
In this way, the salaries of the lowest category will be around 140,000 pesos while the average income will be around 250,000 pesos, in both cases without any type of additional. It is worth noting that there is also a differentiation between the personnel of the automotive companies and the auto parts suppliers, since in the terminal calls productivity income is applied, considerably improving salaries.
In the negotiation with the employer representatives, it was established that the increases will be applied to the basic salaries in force as of last January, agreeing on a new meeting on July 1 to apply the increase corresponding to the new period. In the minutes they expressly indicated that the parties “commit to making their best effort to maintain harmonious and orderly relations, which allow meeting the demands of both companies and workers.”
Quarterly negotiations and payment of a super bonus
Union sources explained to iProfessional that “With the 21.85 percent increase, the INDEC measurement for the first quarter is exceededwhich was 21.7 percent, which allows us to sustain the salary of the personnel of our different activities”, highlighting the aforementioned percentage is applied once and not in installments. The improvement benefits some 115,000 workers who perform tasks at terminals, auto parts manufacturers, dealers, workshops, VTVs and the Automobile Club, among others.
Among the latest achievements obtained by the union headed by Ricardo Pignanelli is the payment of a bonus that started at 200,000 pesos and reached 300,000 depending on the categories, which was settled in the last days of February until last March 10.
In this regard, from SMATA they indicated that “between October and November we began to talk about the payment of a bonus while the Government was studying how to apply wage aid to sustain wages and internal consumption” and added that “just as we spoke with officials we did what with the employers, taking into account the effort made by the mechanics in the middle of the pandemic and the recovery of the automotive industry”.
The average income will be around 250,000 pesos
They stressed that “the idea was that the bonus does not impact the income tax and that it comes as a help after the expenses of the vacations and at the beginning of the classes, with the expenses that all that implies”.
Fight against unemployment with industrial projects
For Pignanelli, the way to combat unemployment, job insecurity or the conversion of social plans for an industrial project sustained over time. He claimed that “there are 5 million unemployed that we have to try to get them into the industrial world” and remarked that “we need 16 million industrial workers so that the equation closes us down, not only in the workplace, but in a country project”
The head of SMATA stated that “we have a policy of trying to sit at a table and agree on everything that can be agreed. I think we are in a moment in which we have to sit down and arrange to produce more sources of work because it is what people need.“.
Regarding the scheme of automatic quarterly increase for the cost of living in the agreements of his union, he said that the workers of the activity “do not have the ideal salary but at least they have some reality to be able to continue their lives” and recalled that “In 2015 we earned 2,100 dollars in the terminal and today we can hardly measure it due to inflation and this run will change, while some enlightened people try to dollarize the economy without taking into account the brutal consequences that this would generate.”
