Of the national budget which is approximately six trillion pesosthe 30 million workers contribute at least one trillion, since they pay vacation taxes, Christmas bonus, overtime, profit sharing, which is equivalent to one sixth of all taxes collected and exercised in the country.
“We are intensive taxpayers to the country. We pay taxes on everything, electricity bills, gas, footwear, clothing. We are present in all tax consumption. We are not only consumers of medicines and food. And all this represents a 16% VAT cut to our salary and we do not have tax deductions,” explained the assistant general secretary of the Confederation of Workers of Mexico (CTM), the lawyer Fernando Salgado Delgado in an interview with El Sol de México.
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By demanding less tax burden, the Secretary General indicated that a privilege for the workers is not being demandedbecause the Value Added Tax (VAT) is already paid on everything that is consumed.
“We propose the installation of a dialogue table in which the three sectors participate in addition to: worker, business and governmentspecialists, academics, economists, to analyze the pros and cons and the scope of this proposal and how far it can go”, he said.
“It is time to relaunch, recover the social mobility of workers, to rebuild a new middle class and as a central point the activity of the workers. If there is awareness of better salaries, of decent vacations, of eliminating outsourcing, it is time to give strength to the country, ”he added.
In addition, the lawyer proposed eliminate labor illegality and incorporate the more than 36 million workers that are in the informal sector, since according to the National Institute of Statistic and Geography (INEGI) in December 2022, the Economically active population (PEA) was 60.1 million and of that total, 60 percent work without any benefits and therefore do not pay taxes.
“This for Mexico is a huge drain on tax collection. It is a huge challenge. For workers who are in this condition, it implies not contributing to your pension, to acquire housing, for your social security and not having access to the health system”, he added.
He also indicated that it could be feasible that through the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare could be linked to the Secretariats of Economy, Finance, the Tax Service (SAT) and also the labor movement to analyze the scope of the negotiation.
Less taxes, higher productivity
He explained that at lowering taxes would increase productivity automatically because for people working overtime implies very little benefit
“For the simple reason that today, in many parts of the country, people do not want to work overtime because you invest a lot of your time and the benefit is very little, because the government takes away a significant part of those extra hours that you have worked per day (…) of those nine hours they are reduced to five hours of profit for a long investment time. And the most valuable thing we have is our labor force and time“, he explained.
Likewise, he recognized that there are important advances for the working sector, such as the decent vacationthe reduction in the weeks of listing for pensions, the increase in pension contribution and fundamentally the elimination of outsourcing that brought approximately three million people out of the informal sector.
He explained that the CTM ensures that companies have a good work environment where workers can develop and have more jobsThat is why it is also demanded that there be good economic conditions.
“For this reason, the opening of dialogue between the federal and state governments so that more workers join the formal sector, make their procedures friendlier, more transparent. It is a central issue to avoid corruption at all levels of government” , he pointed.
In the same way, he explained that the unions are not only recipients of quotas because they are aware that the workers do not remain without work due to the closure of sources of employment by entrepreneurs.
“To be more competitive, we need not only to be the workforce of the United States to generate goods and services for foreign consumption, but also for our market and that this strengthens our economy (…) workers need to strengthen the internal market . We are talking about building a new middle class, having as a fundamental point the activity of Mexican workers,” he added.
Recover social mobility
Salgado Delgado mentioned that for the country, the great moments of development occurred from the construction of the City University for the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with President Miguel Alemán, later the birth of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) with Lazaro Cardenas.
“Industrialization was accompanied through education and with it, social mobility. Today we need to recover social mobility of the workers, if we do not stay stagnant (…) but if there is that awareness of the salary, it is time to relaunch those issues that are going to give strength to the country,” he added.
Finally, he added that if there were no increase in the minimum wage, Mexico would have been in a more difficult situation with the price of a kilogram of lemon at 80 pesos, avocados at almost 100 pesos and a kilo of tortilla at 30 pesos.
