Salzburg, Aug 23 (CTK correspondent) – French and Austrian companies in the Czech Republic pay their employees 30 or 40 percent of the salaries they pay to their employees in their own countries, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka told journalists on Wednesday.
The Czech cheap manpower is also caused by the foreign companies economising, Sobotka said before meeting Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) wants to discuss the convergence of earnings and living standards between the eastern and western parts of the EU with them.
“French and Austrian companies here pay 30, 40 percent of what they pay in their mother countries,” Sobotka said.
“If France, Austria and other countries speak about social dumping, about our employees being ready to work for low salaries, if compared with their labour market, the low salaries are also due to their firms economising in the Czech Republic,” Sobotka said.
He said foreign companies paid out a great deal of money in the form of dividends, while a part of them could stay in the Czech Republic “in the form of salaries.”
The government heads of Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia along with the French president are to discuss social dumping in Salzburg. Before the talks, Sobotka is scheduled to meet Macron and then also Kern.
Sobotka said the governments of Austria and France should bear in mind that their companies should not “take part in the dumping in the sphere of salaries” and should increase the earnings.
“One can clearly see within a concern in particular that the people who have the same productivity of labour, executing similar work in various places in Europe, have large discrepancies in their salaries,” Sobotka said.
He said the Czech government was regularly rising the minimum wage and salaries in the public sector.
“If it proceeded at this pace, it would take some 222 years for Czech wages to catch up with the French level. We consider this completely unacceptable and impossible,” Sobotka said a week ago.
