Yolanda Díaz has started the political course by aligning herself with the unions, pointing to an increase in the minimum wage above 60% of the average wage and attacking the president of the employers’ association, Antonio Garamendi, for blocking collective bargaining. If the usual style of the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor is that of seeking consensus, yesterday in her first statements after the holidays she left this lane to charge against Garamendi, whom she demanded to commit with her country. “I think that Mr. Garamendi knows very well what is happening in our country and blocking the negotiation of collective agreements today is not a good recipe,” said the vice president.
In this field of salary negotiation, with the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) stuck, Yolanda Díaz has chosen a side and is placed on the side of CC.OO. and UGT. “I ask the CEOE to commit to her country. Therefore, my explicit support for the union mobilizations against the Spanish employers”. If on Tuesday the minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, limited herself to making an appeal to employers and unions to come to an agreement without going any further, stating that it is a matter of collective bargaining, yesterday Díaz clearly took sides.
The blockade of the AENC negotiations suggests a hot autumn, with the unions already preparing mobilizations to force the employers to make their position more flexible. Achieving it will be difficult, both because of the economic uncertainty, with electricity shot up and an increase in inflation that continues without an expiration date, as well as because of the disagreement on a key point: the salary review clauses, which are essential for CC.OO. and UGT and unacceptable for the CEOE.
On the other hand, the vice president also announced an increase in the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI) that could even go above what the Government had indicated until now, which is 60% of the average salary. “Without a doubt, we are going to raise the SMI and we are going to do it more than ever,” said Díaz and, although sources from his team clarify that the “more than ever” refers to the need to increase it more than the amount, which is left in the hands of the experts, the vice president pointed out that the increase should be higher. “We have called the meeting of experts on September 2 and we are going to tell them that beyond the path of 60% of the average salary, we have to be aware of the situation we are experiencing,” he said, citing that we must take into account triggered inflation as a very important factor. Here he recalled that in the Workers’ Statute, inflation, which has climbed to 10.8%, the share of wages in national income, productivity, and the economic situation, which in These moments are “of maximum uncertainty”, in the words of Díaz.
The unions have already demanded in recent days a higher increase in the SMI, which does not remain at the 1,049 euros per month that the experts recommend, but rather increases to 1,100. That the Government demonstrate its progressiveness by increasing it more, Pepe Álvarez, general secretary of the UGT, said this week.
The meeting of the experts who advise the Government is convened to update its data, given that its previous pronouncement dates from June of last year. Specifically, in that document they encrypt 60% of the average salary in a range between 1,011 and 1,049 euros per month in 14 payments by 2023. The Government’s commitment so far is to apply 60%, and for the precise amount it has called back to the experts to update their estimates.
The latest increase in the SMI to 1,000 euros per month was already agreed upon only by two sides, the Government and the unions, with the employers distancing themselves from an increase that they considered unacceptable in current times. Now, it is very possible that the CEOE will still not accept this increase. Let us remember that the pact of the government coalition established the commitment to bring the SMI to 60% of the average salary at the end of the legislature. Now it is necessary to put exact and updated figures to this percentage.
Meanwhile, from UGT they praised Yolanda Díaz for defending the rise of the SMI in accordance with the increase in prices. “I deeply appreciate the sensitivity, anyone with a certain head and who thinks of the majority has to think that wages have to rise with prices,” said its secretary general, Pepe Álvarez, adding that the unions will not allow wages rise in the environment of 3% in the face of 10% inflation: “It has neither head nor tail, it does not happen in any European country.”
