3 million workers in Spain and the employers who pay their salaries will have to wait a few more weeks to find out how much their salaries will increase from next year: interprofessional minimum wage (SMI). Failure to reach an agreement on social dialogue with employers evaluating the offer Ministry of Labor The revaluation of this reference by 4 percent, which the unions consider inadequate, forces the Government to postpone its final decision until January.
Sources consulted in this way from the Ministry of Labor confirm that the last Cabinet of Ministers of 2023 will not consider any decree on SMI this Wednesday. And from 1 January will continue temporarily 1,080 euros gross (in 14 payments). Differences within the administration also make it difficult to reach a consensus on a re-evaluation that has not previously received the approval of social actors.
Employers – with the support of the centres – demanded that the Government compensate for the increase in the minimum wage in public contracts, since in some of them this salary is quite common and a 4 percent increase would result in significant wage increases. The draft law necessary for the performance of the contract remains the same.
Labor has publicly expressed its intention to work on specific reviews of public contracts particularly affected, although this is the responsibility of the Department of the Exchequer. And there is a headline like this: Maria Jesus Montero, closed the door on this possibility a few days ago. “The increase in the SMI cannot come at the expense of the aggregation of all Spaniards,” he said in a statement following the last Fiscal and Fiscal Policy Council (CPFF).
Although Labor clarified that Montero was talking about a generalized de-indexing of public contracts and was proposing specific and never generalized reviews. But they have now failed to unblock negotiations and no new meetings are planned with employers and unions to reach the final figure.
It remains to be seen whether ‘Paguilla’ will be necessary
For this reason, the final decision on the minimum wage was postponed until January at the earliest. The Ministry of Labor’s intention is to approve a royal decree. retroactive effectsThe same methodology that was applied in previous years when it was not possible to reach an agreement and turn it into a deal. State official bulletin (BOE) previously December 31.
Depending on the delay in the final decision, companies that pay their employees the minimum wage (about three million across Spain and 250,000 in Catalonia in particular) will have room to include the revaluation in the same January payroll or will have to do so now. in February and you will pay a ‘paguilla’ as compensation for the compulsory delay in that month.
Domestic workers, agricultural workers, delivery drivers or chambermaids are some of the professions where minimum wage is very common or directly the norm.
Complex negotiations
In the last five years, the Government did not approve the revaluation of the minimum wage before December 31 of the previous year. The last time this tradition was observed was in 2018, when the PSOE’s then monochromatic Executive Board approved the SMI increase at an extraordinarily held Council of Ministers in Barcelona.
Since then, and for different reasons, revaluations have occurred in January, as last year, or even in February. This increases the salary base almost 50% It has become difficult to reach agreement with employers’ unions for this purpose over the past five years, fueling discord within the coalition and making final implementation at the BOE even more difficult. Disagreements between the First Vice President and the President for Economic Affairs, Nadia Calvinoand second vice-president and leader of the Labor Party, Yolanda Diazhas become permanent in recent years.