Workers demand more jobs and better wages

Labor unions in Panama require economic strategies that do not focus only on the coffers of business people, but but also to bet on human development, promoting a better quality of life, quality jobs and wages, said Eduardo Gil, general secretary of Convergencia Sindical.

Employers and workers agree on the need to create quality employment and fair wages, but they disagree on the causes that prevent the achievement of this goal.

In the IV Quality of Life Report, the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Panama (CCIAP) and allies of the Panama Observatory, Tell me!. They also emphasized the need to create the necessary conditions for people to have access to quality jobs, fair income and decent work.

Data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census of Panama (INEC) show unemployment of 7.4% until August, informal employment around 47.4%, while invisible underemployment until April 2022, i.e. those people who work 40 or more hours and who they receive income below the minimum wage, in 14.8%.

For the economic researcher, Reyes Arturo Valverde, apart from creating a state of indignity in the groups that suffer from it, Low wages create an economy with reduced consumption capacity to continue growing.

At the moment, it is evident that Panama does not have the capacity to create jobs, therefore the business sector takes advantage of this high demand for employment to pay low wages, warns the economic researcher.

The general secretary of Convergencia Sindical agrees with the expert. For Gil, it is inevitable that wages for different jobs have a fair, just, decent compensation that allows the population to have an appropriate level of consumption that contributes to the economy.’

47.4%

of informal employment recorded in Panama as of August 2023.

14.8%

It is a reflection of invisible underemployment, those who work 40 or more hours and earn less than the minimum wage.

The CCIAP report also claims a lack of talent and weakening labor input (human resources) coming from low education.

The latter was also rejected by Gil, who points out that in Panama there are no monitoring statistics in relation to the availability of qualified labor.

“Panama has a large number of unemployed workers, while in these same professions, company owners claim that they lack human resources or seek to bring in foreign labor,” he said.

“This seems like an attempt to import foreign labor under an unimproved scheme of working conditions or with greater flexibility,” asks Gil.

Increasing company profits at the expense of excessive labor exploitation may benefit a small group of business people, but in the long run it has serious consequences for the economy and even for small and medium-sized enterprises, warns Gil.

For Reyes Valverde, more than a lack of experts in key sectors and innovation, What is missing is a demand development policy, which promotes the creation of these professional profiles and therefore offers decent wages.

The economist and union leader also rejects business arguments about unemployment and wage growth. There is no connection between wages and unemployment, they said.

Panorama

For the union leader, until Panama changes the commercial logic of defining a cash-based economy, the labor, social and political crisis will continue to deepen, as will the instability of the economy and the lack of investment security.

For Gil, 2024 is an election year and workers see no prospect that the government, which has not made significant changes in economic strategies for four years, will do so within a few months of its stay in power.

Likewise, in half a year we will be faced with a Government that will start trying to define or focus its own economic and work strategy, concludes Gil.