“It is a success story. It benefits more than 2.5 million workers, 14% of the total number of employees.” It is the phrase with which the vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, has presented the increase in the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) that she signed with the social agents this Wednesday. An increase of 5% in 2024, reaching 1,134 euros per month for fourteen payments, an increase that will already be applied from this January. There are 54 additional euros per payment.
Díaz and the general secretaries of UGT, Pepe Álvarez, and CC.OO., Unai Sordo, have participated in the signing ceremony in which the employers’ association has been absent, which distanced itself from the pact and launched reproaches against the Government for the way in which the negotiation has been conducted.
It will probably be next week when the Council of Ministers approves the decree law that establishes this increase, with which the SMI will have risen 54% since 2018, already with Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa, when it was located at 735.9 euros. An increase to meet the objective of reaching 60% of the minimum wage that the Government has set.
The vice president recalled that these 1,134 euros are a mandatory minimum and encouraged people to report any non-compliance. “No one who works full time can earn less. For this reason, I encourage any worker who does not receive it to exercise their rights,” stated Yolanda Díaz.
At the signing ceremony, the unions highlighted that this increase especially benefits women and young people. Pepe Álvarez has highlighted that “the rise in the SMI has the face of a woman, it has the face of a young person”, while Unai Sordo has stated that “the typical profile of the recipient is a woman, young, with a temporary contract and who works in commerce or hostelry”.
One point that the unions are demanding is to modify the SMI regulations to prevent companies from absorbing the increases with various supplements or bonuses, such as seniority, a practice endorsed on several occasions by the courts. The union request is to take advantage of the transposition of the European minimum wage directive to modify the regulations and avoid this absorption of SMI increases with already existing supplements.
The increase in the SMI affects 2.5 million workers, especially women and young people. According to CC.OO. calculations, it will benefit 17% of women who work full time, while it remains only 10.6% of men in this situation. If examined by sector, the main beneficiaries in absolute numbers are commerce and hospitality workers, more than half a million, although if the focus is on the relative incidence, then agriculture stands out, where it will affect 45.9%. of the total number of workers.
These negotiations started with a proposal from the employers’ association proposing a 3% increase, which could be higher depending on inflation, but conditional on the prices of contracts with the public administration being indexed. A common request from the CEOE but which on this occasion was placed as a red line, given that the Treasury flatly refused to open the door so that companies that have contracts with the administration could raise their prices, the negotiation stalled.
Labor proposed an increase of 4% but with explicit warning that, if the employers did not join the consensus, they would raise it further. “Whoever does not enter into an agreement, pays the consequences of not doing so,” said the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey. A warning that the CEOE interpreted as a threat and blackmail. Finally, with the employers out, Labor and unions agreed on a 5% increase.
