Díaz will use the IPC trick as an excuse to raise the SMI above 1,048 euros per month in 2023
The Vice President of the Government Yolanda Díaz is determined to address a notable increase in the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI) by 2023 in the face of the situation of runaway increase in prices, which despite the moderation in August continue to ride above 10% for the third consecutive month. The Government is aware of the situation and will try to agree with employers and unions on a more generous increase than the one that the Executive itself set as an objective for this legislature in order to contain the bleeding of purchasing power that the employed population is suffering in Spain.
In this sense, Díaz confirmed this Wednesday at a press conference that next Friday he will meet the committee of experts that must determine the level of the increase that should be addressed to reach 60% of the average salary set by the European Social Charter, which is the objective that should be reached before the end of the legislature, that is, in 2023.
According to the calculations handled by Yolanda Díaz's own technical office, this increase should culminate in an SMI of 1,048 euros per month in 2023. And this will be the "minimum" increase that will take place, as reiterated by the head of Labor and Social Economy before the media. However, the vice president slipped that this rise could be higher and asked the businessmen for the negotiation, assuring that in the rise not only that 60% of average salary must be taken into account, but also that it is necessary to have account "inflation and the share of wages in national income."
Díaz recalls that after the crisis of 2008 the participation of salaries in the national income fell by 5 percentage points, of which 4.5 points have been recovered with the successive increases in the SMI. In addition, Díaz pointed out that in the best of cases the CPI will end at 7% or 8%, which implies a historic blow to the purchasing power of families.
In this way, the vice president confirmed that she will not convene the employers' association and the unions to negotiate the increase in the SMI until December, when the level of average inflation for the year will be known, and all the elements to limit the revaluation. In fact, Díaz insisted that the guidelines of the European Social Charter speak of an SMI "from 60% of the average salary", being able to exceed this level.
In fact, Díaz will have the support of the unions in this contest. The general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, already assured a few days ago that a rise of 48 euros in this context is meager and demanded that the path end in an increase in the SMI to 1,200 euros per month. And furthermore, he warns the CEOE that there will be mobilizations if they do not open their hands.
Retrieve the AENC
Parallel to the issue of the SMI, which will not be substantiated until December, the Government has returned to the media load to press for a consensus between the employers and the unions for the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC). Díaz asked the CEOE on Wednesday to return to the dialogue table from which it rose on May 5 and to look out for the general interest of the country, as the unions are doing.
«The return to the negotiating table is key and that is why I make this summons to the CEOE and the social agents. They have always been up to the task and I ask them to do so again, we need to meet again with an employer that was up to the standards of their country," said Díaz.
After the controversy of recent days, the second vice president and Minister of Labor clarified during her speech to the media that whenever the employers have been right, they have recognized it, although on this occasion she considers that it is the unions who are in the right . «They are right because the unions in Spain are defending the general interest, 17 million salaried people in our country. Today the position and economic solution that the unions are giving is to defend the general interest in Spain and that is why I think they are right," says Díaz.
The minister also compared the positions of the unions with those of the vice president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Luis de Guindos, who a few months ago advocated a salary increase "to prevent the economy from getting worse" and not "out of ideological conviction" .
It should be remembered that the AENC negotiating table ended on May 5, after the employers refused to accept the unions' claim to include the salary review clause in collective agreements. Díaz guarantees at this point that the unions "have never talked about a indexing to the CPI» and has warned employers that wages, which have been revalued by 2.5%, are not the cause of inflation, which stands at 10.4%, according to advance data for August.
