Argentina’s automobile workers’ union Smata has signed a deal with Adefa, an association which brings together eleven manufacturing sites and international firms present in the country, on a 6.41% pay rise for the period from April to June, adding to a 7% rise for the first quarter of the year. The agreement means that, for the first half of 2017, the sector’s salary increase reaches around 14%. If this framework is extended for the next two quarters, the annual rise will reach 28%, which goes beyond the 18% cap that had been set by the government and which has proved increasingly difficult to adhere to.
Wage increases in Argentina have become indispensable given the rampant level of inflation. While in theory agreed annually, these pay rises are becoming more and more fragmented. The automobile sector has been pioneering from this perspective, fixing quarterly rises that allow the sector to adapt to market uncertainty. Ricardo Pignanelli, Smata’s general secretary, tells the newspaper El Cronista, that “the agreement is nothing more than compensation for the inflation increase over the first q
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