Diego de Cuba, president of labor union STA, gave Utilities NV ultimatum not to reduce salaries from those working at NV Elmar, otherwise, there will be consequences.
Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes’ said that she is aware of the discontentment and concern reigning under a group of workers in Aruba. This is a group that still has a job and who are well paid. They are being asked to hand in 12.6% of their salaries in solidarity with those who lost everything.
On the one hand, the Prime Minister understands for them, because just like any other person, she is also fed up with the consequences this pandemic has on Aruba.
When the pandemic hit in March of last year, the Government lost 80% of its income. There was money to pay only 20% of their expenses. At that time, the Government did not tell all those who work for them that they could only pay them 400 florins a month. They ended up asking the Netherlands for a loan to pay everyone’s salary and other expenses.
But this loan did not come without any conditions. One of them was that every public and semi-public workers had to hand in 12.6% of their salary. And ministers and parliamentarians had to give in 25%. All this was necessary to be able to receive the loan and to start rescuing Aruba.
The group of workers at Elmar, Web, and Arubus who are unhappy about giving in 12.6% of their salary is putting the financing that the Netherlands is willing to provide Aruba with at risk. If Aruba were receiving 100% of their income back, the Government wouldn’t have had a problem paying everything their full salaries. But unfortunately, this is not the case. Last year Aruba recovered only 30% of its tourism, which is not enough to cover all of the Government’s expenses.
Next to the fact that the salary cut is a condition to receive financing from the Netherlands, it shows solidarity to 11.650 people who lost their jobs in 2020 and depend on FASE.
