The CEOE rejects raising the minimum wage to 1,000 euros

The executive committee of the CEOE has unanimously rejected the proposal to increase in the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI) proposed by the Spanish Government to raise it to 1,000 euros gross per month in 2022.

CEOE and Cepyme explain in a joint statement that the rise is made in an economic context of “uncertainty, in which pre-crisis business levels will not foreseeably be recovered until 2023, with growing pressure on company costs and a notable accumulated fall of productivity”.

A new rise in the SMI, they add, will contribute to “increasing labor costs and pressure on company margins, which (…) may lead to less economic dynamism in the future and less job creation.”

“It seems to respond more to a political aspiration within the Government than to economic logic”

All this, they point out, after the companies have assumed “a 30% rise in the SMI since 2019, with a recent rise in September of last year – which would reach 5.2% added to the one proposed for 2022” .

“The government’s proposal is unaffordable for especially vulnerable sectors such as agriculture and those intensive in labor (cleaning, hospitality, etc.)which have been bearing all kinds of cost overruns for years”, they underline.

The proposal, concludes the CEOE, “seems to respond more to a political aspiration within the Government than to economic logic.”

The Spanish Government will meet again this Wednesday with employers and unions with the aim of being able to approve the increase, which will have retroactive effect from January 1, as soon as possible.

After the rejection of the CEOE, the increase will almost certainly be approved again only with the support of the unions, as happened with the increase approved in September of last year.