“Since the first day of this third mandate you have given me, I have worked to repair and rebuild our country,” Lula declared on the radio and television network, insisting that “reconstituting the gains lost by the workers is a priority for our government.”
He hinted at the assessment of the minimum wage, “which six years ago had not seen a real increase, and was losing purchasing power day by day. But we have already begun to reverse this loss.”
He promised that, starting Monday, the minimum wage would be 1,320 riyals (about $260) for active, retired and retired workers. It was a small but real increase, he said, “for the first time in six years”.
He also announced that in the next few days he would send a bill to the National Congress so that “this invasion is permanent, and the minimum wage is adjusted every year above inflation, as it was when we ruled Brazil.”
And rest assured, he stressed, “until the end of my term, it will again be as great an instrument of social transformation as it was in the past, when it grew by 74 percent above inflation.”
Thanks to this, Lula noted, “millions of Brazilian men and women have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty and paved the way for a better life.”
The founder of the Labor Party also announced that the scope of tax breaks that were frozen eight years ago will be changed.
He insisted that there would be no reconstruction of Brazil without the appreciation of the workers and that the country would “grow again with social integration and new jobs will be created”.
For Lula, May 1, “always a day of struggle, will also be again a day of victories for the working people”.
The central unions, which uniformly organize International Workers’ Day, consider that the defeat of the right in the presidential elections last October turned history into a victory for democracy in Brazil.
“The working class has resisted and fought, and now they can breathe, they have hope, because next May 1 they will celebrate their greatest achievement in recent years: Lula, a Democratic governor, in the presidency,” said the president. From the Unitary Workers’ Center, Sergio Nobre.
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