They always say you should learn from history…. But it seems sometimes even history can't help: "The more we talked about actual wages, the more they talked about minimums.
We couldn't get any movement, we couldn't get increases on actual wages.
They would only agree to increases on minimums. Every time we only got an increase on minimums so most workers didn't get an increase.
We tried to mobilise but it was not easy." Les Ketteldas, a past Numsa collective bargaining co-ordinator, and now deputy director general of the Department of Labour, sharing his experiences with NBC delegates about motor negotiations in the 1980s and early 1990s
Source
Numsa News