Adjusting Salaries and Wages Is a Duty, Not a Favour: A Reading of the Salaries and Wages Crisis in Lebanon and Ways to Address It
The issue of adjusting salaries and wages in Lebanon has long been a point of contention between public sector employees and labour unions on one side, and the state on the other, particularly since the state has persistently failed to approve fair increases commensurate with rising inflation rates and higher cost-of-living levels. The state's approach to this issue has been marked by postponement and procrastination, with the required increases approved only after they have lost their actual value, stripping salary and wage adjustment policies of their economic rationale and weakening their social impact.
Compounding this reality is the fact that the solutions of successive governments have often come in isolation from any reform plan, or even any future vision, with increases to salaries and wages proposed without securing sustainable sources of funding. This has turned salary and wage adjustments into additional burdens on the public budget, rather than part of an integrated economic plan that helps secure a decent life for employees and workers without disrupting fiscal balances or overburdening the public treasury.
With the arrival of 2020, and in the wake of the financial and monetary collapse that swept Lebanon, the issue of adjusting salaries and wages came to the forefront after they rapidly lost their value. This deepened the crisis facing employees and retirees in a manner unprecedented in both severity and duration, as it coincided with the depreciation of the lira's exchange rate and rising prices of goods and services, at a time when salaries and wages lost around 95% of their purchasing power.
By contrast, government remedies have remained captive to partial and temporary solutions, limited to approving discretionary increases, some termed incentives and others social assistance, that are based neither on cost-of-living rates nor on inflation indicators, and all of which lack a comprehensive vision for adjusting salaries and wages. What is most dangerous about these solutions is that they involve an attempt to forfeit the acquired rights of employees, military personnel, and retirees, as the increases approved to date are included neither in calculating end-of-service indemnities nor in calculating retirement pensions.
Despite the increases to salaries and wages approved during the elapsed period of the crisis, their cost in the 2025 budget fell to approximately $2.4 billion of total budget expenditure, having exceeded $8 billion in the 2019 budget. This illustrates the extent of the injustice inflicted upon public sector employees and retirees, and yet the 2026 budget made no allocations for the new increases they are demanding.
While the issue of salary adjustment continues to oscillate between fear of its repercussions on the exchange rate and linking it to the path of economic recovery, and despite the passage of nearly six years since the crisis began, the interventions of the International Monetary Fund and the list of conditions and restrictions whose implementation it oversees now stand out. Aligning with both in this regard is the Civil Service Board, which proposes granting salary increases by multiplying the base salary gradually over five years, starting in 2026 and running through 2030.
Yet the irony in these approaches, whether in terms of the increases approved by the government, the Civil Service Board's draft plan, or the conditions and restrictions of the International Monetary Fund, is that they all ignore rising inflation rates and the mounting cost of living. This reduces the proposed solutions for salaries and wages to mere nominal increases eroded by inflation and rising prices, and ignores the fact that employees' salaries and wages are not merely a cost paid by the state to military and civilian public sector personnel, but rather compensation for their contribution to providing security and public services, compensation that must be fair and allow them a decent life.
It is worth noting that any increase in the purchasing power of employees and workers through salary and wage adjustments inevitably translates into higher demand for goods and services, and an increase in overall consumption that helps stimulate the various productive and economic sectors, thereby aiding economic recovery. No economy can rise or recover in the absence of an effective and capable state, bearing in mind that this state derives its effectiveness and capability from the executive apparatus formed by employees across their various fields of work.
Consequently, procrastinating over the approval of fair increases to the salaries and wages of military and civilian public sector employees and retirees amounts to making them bear the consequences of the transgressions committed by the political and monetary authorities during the period that paved the way for the crisis and caused its outbreak. In this, too, lies a disregard for the economic role played by low-income earners, of whom public sector employees form the largest part, given that their incomes constitute a primary driver of economic activity.
Meanwhile, the current government has failed to fulfil its promise to adjust the salaries of employees and retirees, particularly military personnel, whose salaries in 2026 were supposed to equal no less than 50% of what they were in 2019 in US dollars, whereas this year's draft budget included no allocations to cover their cost. Nor has the government fulfilled its promise to settle the 2025 educational assistance for retired military personnel to match the assistance approved at the State Employees' Cooperative.
Ironically, the government has approved astronomical salaries for regulatory authorities and their heads, each exceeding in value the salaries of the three presidencies even after their increase under the Civil Service Board's plan through 2030. This prompts questions about the criteria adopted to approve such salaries, and about the principle of fairness among categories of public office. Those questions grow all the more pressing given that the role of these authorities is an advisory one, non-binding on the supervisory authorities.
In light of the above, it must be emphasised that adjusting the salaries and wages of public sector employees, whether military or civilian, is neither a favour from the political class nor an option open to postponement, but rather a constitutional and moral duty to which the state must commit towards its employees. Indeed, one of the most basic rights of every employee is to receive a fair wage commensurate with the nature of their work and responsibilities, ensuring a decent standard of living that guarantees the minimum level of stability and human dignity.
Likewise, it is the right of a retiree, who has spent the prime of their youth serving the state and its institutions, to have their dignity preserved after retirement and their right to a decent life safeguarded, free from destitution, in fidelity to their sacrifices and commitment, and in consolidation of the principle of social justice upon which public policies are supposed to be based.
Based on the foregoing, the salaries and wages issue will remain an open crisis with no horizon for resolution, a permanent emblem of the social crisis, and a mirror of the state's failure so long as it evades adopting a scientific and comprehensive approach to adjusting salaries and wages. What is required is an approach that respects the principle of fairness, takes efficiency and productivity into consideration, and calculates real inflation rates and the actual cost of living.
In conclusion, social justice and human dignity remain the two fundamental pillars of any true state, and economic and social stability will only be achieved by granting public sector employees their rights in full and undiminished, through a genuine adjustment of salaries and wages based on clear scientific criteria, guaranteeing them and their families a decent life worthy of their sacrifices and their service to the nation.
Translated from Arabic with AI. Read it in Arabic