Since 2006 the number of workers in Portugal receiving the minimum wage has tripled.
That number has increased every year for 8 years so that currently 400,000 people that are in work are earning just 485 euros a month before taxes.
The depressing figures from the Office of Strategic Studies at the Ministry of Economy correspond to a 12.9% of the workforce excluding civil servants, and those involved in fishing and in agriculture where low wages are the norm.
Carlos Silva, the secretary general of the General Union of Workers, said today that the impoverishment of Portuguese workers is not an inevitability and that they can use their vote in the European elections in May to require new policies and an end to austerity.
The union considers that, in general, everyone has been affected by the deepening austerity measures and the Portuguese government has blamed the economic situation of the country for the increasing number of those living on the breadline.
Comments
The wage gap between a company's owners and the workers in Portugal is one of the largest in Europe and it has always been so. Entrepeneurship has never been promoted, though is seems to always be actively squashed by the state. Emigration has always been the answer, and nothing will probably change for my kids: I emigrated some years ago, hoping they may not have to.
The Portuguese worker, to his employer, is still - 40 years later - almost worthless.
Yet International companies pay well in Portugal and still make a profit.
Is there a lesson there ?