This time the employer has been faster. Only 24 hours after the third vice-president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, set the increase of the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) as one of her immediate priorities when she took office, the CEOE has already put the proposal on the table It is a way to take the initiative and to demonstrate willingness to negotiate.
The employer takes as a reference the wage increases established by the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) signed in May by the social agents and transfers them to the SMI. In conclusion, a 3% increase in the minimum wage in 2024, which would go from the current 1,080 euros to 1,112.40 euros (32 more euros), and a further increase also of 3% in 2025, until reaching the 1,145.77 euros per month.
In addition, the guarantee clause established in the AENC would apply, with an additional increase of up to one point in the event that inflation exceeded these limits. In other words, the increase could reach 4%. In any case, with a 3% increase, since there are 14 payments, the minimum wage would be a total of 15,573.60 euros in 2024 and 16,040.78 euros in 2025.
The proposal came out of Wednesday’s CEOE board meeting, where the president, Antonio Garamendi, was surprised when he came up with such a detailed proposal without first consulting it. Above all because it is an issue that is the responsibility of the central government and in which employers usually have something to lose in the face of public opinion. Taking the initiative gives an advantage, but it can also serve the Ministry of Labor to use it as a counterweight to union demands.
The proposal is far from the requests of the unions. Last week the general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, advanced a figure of nearly 1,200 euros, which would mean an increase of more than 10%. The issue is to quantify what constitutes 60% of the average salary, which is the objective of both unions and the Spanish Government.
The CEOE justifies the reference to the AENC because “a relationship is maintained between the evolution of the SMI and that of the rest of the wages that are agreed in the framework of collective bargaining”. The relationship with the AENC is not innocuous. The employer has recently prioritized the agreement between social agents and has left as little space as possible to the Government, with which relations have been significantly strained, and in the AENC there is no participation of the Executive.
An added argument of laCEOE is that it will mean an increase of more than 2% of civil servants by 2024.
What the employer does establish is a precondition, one that it has been demanding for some time: the modification of the price review regulations in public sector procurement so that the increase in the SMI has an impact on the contracts in progress. It is a demand that was already included in the AENC to give more flexibility to these public contracts, in which the current regulations do not allow them to review prices, even if costs increase as a result, for example, of the increase in the SMI. It is a particularly sensitive factor in labour-intensive sectors.
Another request, but in this case not elevated to essential, is that a system of deductions applicable to the agricultural sector be established, with a 20% reduction on the business quota for common contingencies.
