The IU councillor in the Almuñécar Town Council has called for the Mayoress, Trinidad Herrera, and chief opposition councillor (ex-mayor), Juan Carlos Benavides to take pay cuts. The IU councillor, Fermín Tejero, who called for this, rejected a salary upon taking up his post.

There is a precedent for this kind of motion: in Santa Fe the minority parties banded together and forced the Mayor of that town to take a pay cut. However, it is unlikely to prosper here as the minor parties do not count on enough council votes against the major parties who will vote against.

The proposal, which will be presented as a motion at the next plenary meeting of the Town Council on the 13ths of December, calls for the Mayoress to take a five-percent cut, so as to ‘set an example.’

The motion will also call for the Mayoress to do something about ex-Mayor, Juan Carlos Benavides’s salary as he has a salary that is almost 20% greater than hers, even though he is a mere councillor. They Mayoress earns 56,000 and Sr. Benavides earns, according to his tax declarations, 66,447.97 euros annually.

The reason for this anomaly is that councillor’s wages are calculated on the salary that they had to give up to become one. Sr. Benavides, whose profession is medicine; he is a G.P., even though he has been a mayor most of his medical career, would be entitled to this 66,000-euro salary as a doctor. However, according to the IU councillor, only if he occupied a department head position and worked shifts etc. This sum is based on a report that said he could earn that much if he were to dedicate his time to his medical profession – what it didn’t say is that he would earn it.

But the fact of the matter is that in these times of austerity, such salaries are completely out of step with what our politicians are asking – no, ‘telling’ – the average person what he must accept.

According to information supplied by Fermin Tejero, every councillor that receives a salary for being such earns 41,000 euros per annum, which coupled with the corresponding Social Security payments that the Town Hall must pay, ascends to 53,000 euros. At present the previous mayor’s party has three salary-earning councillors (amongst them Sr. Benavides with his controversial salary), the PSOE has one, the governing PP has six, and their allies, the PA has two.

The above arrangement was the agreement struck at the beginning of the 4-year mandate, points out PSOE leader, Francisco Prados, who claims that the IU motion is pure demagoguery. He says that any changes must be made through consensus.

Editorial Analysis: There are not enough doctors or teachers but an abundance of politicians, yet politicians instead of cutting back on their own numbers and salaries, prefer to make cuts in health and education.

This is painfully obvious to the man on the street, so it would not be unreasonable to draw the conclusion that most would not consider the call for cuts to politicians salaries as Demagoguery and that the only time their has been consensus amongst our politicians over wages has been when one of their number has proposed a pay increase.