Wage Injustice: How Poverty Squeezes Workers, and Wealth Accumulates with Bosses

"The data is striking, according to which the boss with the highest salary in Macedonia took a salary equivalent to 817 workers on the minimum wage, and the top three bosses with calculated effective net salaries took a salary equivalent to 1,790 workers on the minimum wage for a month, and then some talk about the low productivity of Macedonian workers," Trendafilov says.

"In recent years, politicians have loved to boast about how the growth of the average salary in Macedonia shows that the standard of living of the Macedonian worker is improving, but the reality is that workers, despite receiving a salary, are sinking into poverty, while bosses with salaries in the millions in denars, and even officials with salaries over 2,000 or 2,500 euros, enjoy luxury and are deaf to demands for an increase in the minimum wage and an increase in all other salaries," he says.

"Workers on minimum and average salaries pay a total of 38 percent in mandatory social security contributions, and bosses with millions in income pay contributions of up to 16,430 euros gross (i.e. 16 × 63,154 denars average gross salary for the previous year as the highest base for all contributions). Above that amount, they pay only 10 percent personal tax, so if that is not injustice, then I don't know what is. Therefore, the government must choose - either to give to poor workers with salaries below the average salary or to take from millionaire bosses with salaries over a million denars, because some pay 38 percent in taxes, and others only 10 percent," Trendafilov says.