The Spanish leftist government announced this Wednesday a new increase in the minimum wage, despite the opposition of the employers, who fear that it will be a burden for companies in full economic recovery.
“We reached an agreement with unions” for a new “increase in the minimum wage” retroactively from January 1, 2022, Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz announced on Twitter.
This increase of 3.6% will allow the minimum wage (SMI) to exceed the symbolic bar of 1,000 gross euros per month in 14 paymentswhich are the ones that are traditionally charged in Spain, with an extraordinary one in summer and the other at Christmas.
At 12 months, the minimum wage will be 1,165 euros gross.
❗️ We raise the minimum wage to €1,000 retroactively from January 1, 2022.
We reached an agreement with unions to continue with a firm commitment from the Government: to end inequality and improve the lives of nearly 2 million workers. pic.twitter.com/kxbZxA2JNH
– Yolanda Diaz (@Yolanda_Diaz_) February 9, 2022
According to the Workers’ Commissions union (CCOO), the increase will benefit 1.8 million people, mainly young people. Agriculture and services are the sectors where the increase will have the greatest impact.
It is “one more step in improving the working conditions of the most precarious and most vulnerable people”, congratulated Unai Sordo, secretary general of the CCOO.
The agreement was not signed by employer organizations, including the main one, the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), which considered this increase premature because the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is taking time in Spain.
“Companies are behind” in the recovery, the CEOE said in a statement.
Thus, the rise in the SMI, plus “the rise in the price of raw materials or bottlenecks in global supply chains, may lead to less economic dynamism in the future and less job creation,” the employer added.
The government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, which has promised to increase the minimum wage to 60% of the average salary at the end of the legislature, in 2023, the SMI has already risen several times since 2019.
These increases, the largest in decades, are intended to equate the Spanish minimum wage, until now very low, to that of its European neighbors. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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