The vice president of the Government, Yolanda Diazhas given the official starting signal for the negotiation of the new increase in the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) in 2025 with the first meeting of the Advisory Commission that will prepare in the coming weeks a revaluation proposal that will be brought to the dialogue table with employers and unions. Although the Government’s legal obligation is simply advisory, the Minister of Labor has already confirmed that she will try to reach a consensus with the social agents, and the consequence of this, as she admits, is the possible delay of the approval of the increase in the minimum wage until well into 2025.
A circumstance that would not be new, since it already occurred for the update of the 2024 minimum wage, which did not see the green light until the beginning of February of this year, although, Labor points out that this would not affect the result of the rise since it will operate with retroactive nature. Precisely because of this binding aspect at the beginning of the year, the vice president expressed this Tuesday her desire for the negotiations to be carried out as quickly as possible, with the aim of do not harm the companiess since they will have to compensate for the eventual delay in the payrolls of the slightly more than two million workers affected by the minimum wage in Spain.
At this point, the Ministry confirms that the dilemma that the Advisory Commission must clarify at this time is which statistical sources are linked to the calculation of the 60% of the average salarywhich is the Government’s commitment in compliance with the European Social Charter. In this sense, Díaz did admit that the latest figure with which the department works is a median salary of 22,383 euros per year, a figure included in the INE Salary Structure Survey for 2022.
However, precisely, the exercise of the assembled experts is to first establish what would be the statistical source adequate, the Tax Agency’s personal income tax withholdings and Eurostat statistics also offer versions of the average salary in Spain, and according to Díaz’s mandate, they must also establish the proposal to establish an automatic mechanism that links the revaluation each year of the SMI to that 60% of the average salary.
Minimum CPI
What the Minister of Labor did assure in the press conference held in the context of the first of the meetings that the Advisory Commission will hold, is that the salary increase of the minimum wage for 2025 will be the value of inflation average of the year, to guarantee that these payrolls do not lose purchasing power. According to estimates from the Bank of Spain. This will be around 2.9% annually. So the update will not be below.
In this sense, it is worth noting that both UGT as CC.OO. in a position of maximums they have already conveyed to the Ministry of Labor that they will take to the negotiation stage at the dialogue table a request for revaluation of the 5%. Precisely, the negotiation range moves around this range, as the sources consulted for social dialogue point out to ABC.
Another scale that could reference the level of the increase is the progress of collective agreements. The agreed salary increases are 3.8% in the first months of the year, while the level set in the National Agreement of Agreements for the current year was 3%.
«There was no catastrophe or anything similar and I am not going to give you data, but in all these productive sectors, as you know, the employment levels today are record highs in Spain. The entire neoliberal theory turned out not to be true,” Díaz stressed about the possible response of the employers to the level of the increase that is finally established.
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