Business owners offer a 5% increase

[NewsWhore]

In the face of a government request to increase salaries, the business community has submitted a proposal to increase salaries by 5% this year, but only for minimum wage earners. The labor representative called the offer "pyrrhic", but he probably did not know the meaning of the word. Rafael Abreu, the labor representative at the negotiations, said that the Central Bank has established RD$18,000 as the cost a family's basic necessities. The current minimum wage is between RD$5,200 and RD$6,400 depending on the job. A 5% wage increase would amount to only about RD$300 more per month. Abreu said that talks would go nowhere if this was all the employers could offer. The last major salary increase came in 2004 when salaries were raised by between 25% and 30% across the board. The pay raise was due, in large part, to the devaluation of the Dominican peso caused by the Baninter collapse when the peso reached nearly 60 to the US dollar. It is currently pegged at around RD$33.5 to the dollar, a figure many businesspeople say is too low to allow the country to compete on the international markets. Union leader Rafael Abreu told reporters that he would attend today's meeting of the tri-partite discussion group out of protocol, because workers' representatives are insisting on a 30% increase for all employees earning under RD$30,000 per month.

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