SUNS 4347 Thursday 17 December 1998



MEXICO: MINIMUM WAGE NOT ENOUGH TO BUY FOOD

Mexico, Dec 15 (IPS/Diego Cevallos) -- Despite a recent increase of 14 percent, Mexico's minimum wage is still not enough to buy food with, according to calculations by university researchers here.

In the past 14 years, the amount of money it takes to feed a family of four has shot up by 1,727 percent, experts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have found, whereas the minimum wage has increased by just 435.9 percent.

The researchers released their findings last week, on the heels of an agreement between the government and employers to increase the national minimum wage by 14 percent for the period December 1998 to December 1999. The two sides agreed that sacrifices needed to be made to  void fiscal problems so it was not possible to give salary increases that were higher than the inflation rate.

The 14-percent increase - which is not enough to buy a litre of milk - will keep the wage index on the downward curve on which it has been since the 1980s. "The situation is dramatic for millions of workers who earn the minimum wage," said Luis Lozano, director of the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies of UNAM's Faculty of Economics.

Official studies show that 55 percent of workers who have social security - less than 40 percent of the 37-million-strong potential workforce - earn the equivalent of one to two minimum wages.

Despite the recent increase, the real minimum wage is lower than it was just weeks ago. Due to the devaluation of the national currency, it has now shrunk from $3.40 to $3.20 a day.

According to UNAM, Mexican workers now have salaries equivalent to 0.01 percent of what their counterparts earn in the United States. This disparity has helped transform Mexico into a major exporter to its northern neighbour, to which it sells more than 84 billion dollars' worth of goods and services a year, with 40 percent coming from companies in its export-processing zones.

The low salaries are only one indication of the precarious situation in which Mexico's workers live. In recent years, they have also been buffeted by repeated adjustment measures interspersed with calls for sacrifice, Lozano told IPS.

Rogelio Martinez, director of the Centre for Legal Studies at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies, accuses the government of violating the constitution on the minimum wage issue: by law, Mexico's government is bound to guarantee its workers a minimum wage that satisfies the material, social and cultural needs of the head of each household.

The main trade union federations, which are close to the government, acknowledge that salaries are low but deny that they are precarious and ought to be rejected by the population. Opposition trade unionists, a growing minority, maintain that wages are far too low.

Still, despite the decline in wages, trade unions have never called out workers on a general strike.

Wealth is also concentrated in just a few hands, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Computer Science: 10 percent of Mexicans own 41 percent of the country's wealth, while the poorest fifth of the nation shares 3.2 percent of its wealth.

Things are not expected to improve in 1999 for Mexico's workers, especially since economic prospects for next year look dim, given a sharp drop in the prices of oil, which finances about 40 percent of the state budget.