The improve within the interprofessional minimal wage (SMI) to 1,221 euros per 30 days in 14 funds is sweet information and a brand new step within the combat towards precariousness and within the protection of respectable residing circumstances, additionally strengthened by measures to keep away from taxation. However, there’s a lesser-known actuality that threatens to empty these will increase of content material: by means of the compensation and wage absorption mechanism, many staff see the minimal wage rise, however their payroll doesn’t.
Through this technique, the rise within the SMI is deducted from different already present enhances, in order that, as a substitute of being added, it’s subtracted. The complete wage doesn’t enhance, solely its composition adjustments, and what needs to be an actual improve finally ends up turning into a easy accounting adjustment that’s barely noticeable within the pockets of those that want it most.
An instance helps to grasp it. Until now, the minimal wage was 1,184 euros. Let’s take into consideration a employee who earned that quantity plus a hazard bonus of 37 euros, which allowed her to achieve 1,221 euros. With the brand new improve, the SMI goes exactly to that determine, so the corporate can remove the complement and go away the wage on the authorized minimal. The employee continues to earn the identical quantity, however has misplaced compensation for dangerousness. He hasn’t gained something. If this bonus was 100 euros, earlier than he earned a complete of 1,284 euros (1,184+100) and, after the rise, the bottom wage will increase by 37 euros whereas the complement decreases by the identical quantity, in order that he continues to earn precisely the identical (1,221+63). The improve exists within the BOE, however not within the payroll.
This phenomenon doesn’t solely have an effect on hazard. This additionally occurs with staff chief bonuses, with duty bonuses, with residence bonuses in Ceuta, Melilla or on the islands, with incentives for versatility or particular working circumstances. All of them have been born to acknowledge the trouble, expertise or difficulties of the place, however when they’re absorbed they cease fulfilling their perform and turn into easy devices to steadiness figures.
The cumulative impact is obvious. Year after 12 months, many individuals with salaries near the minimal see their wage frozen whereas costs, lease, purchasing baskets or provides rise. Their payroll stays motionless and their buying energy slowly deteriorates, with out huge headlines or public debates, however with an actual influence on their day by day lives.
At the identical time, a paradox that’s tough to justify happens. Those with increased salaries aren’t affected by this mechanism. If an individual earns a base wage of two,000 euros, they’ll proceed to obtain their full enhances, seniority or duty bonus. The rise within the SMI doesn’t have an effect on it. You keep all of your wage rights. Thus, what needs to be regular parts of any skilled profession find yourself turning into privileges reserved for individuals who already earn extra, whereas those that have much less are minimize exactly.
This system additionally distorts the group of labor inside firms. When the staff chief loses his bonus, he finally ends up incomes the identical because the particular person in control of him. When the supervisor loses his complement, he turns into equal to the operator. Categories are diluted, expertise stops counting, duty stops being paid {and professional} promotion loses which means. When effort is just not rewarded, motivation suffers, involvement decreases and productiveness finally ends up paying the results. Not solely do working individuals lose, but additionally firms and, finally, the whole financial system.
Precisely because of this, within the settlement reached for 2026 between the Government and the union organizations, a selected part has been integrated to arrange and restrict compensation and absorption, with the purpose of avoiding these negative effects and guaranteeing that will increase within the minimal wage translate into actual enhancements. It is a crucial step in social dialogue, which assumes that it’s not sufficient to set a determine within the BOE whether it is later allowed to neutralize it in follow.
Because, if this dynamic is just not corrected, the issue will worsen. Each new improve within the SMI will take up capabilities, classes and enhances, weakening collective bargaining, blocking skilled careers and impoverishing the worth of labor.
The minimal wage needs to be a flooring, by no means a ceiling. Raising it’s important and has allowed the lives of thousands and thousands of working individuals to enhance, however it’s not sufficient if its perverse results aren’t corrected. If compensation and absorption aren’t successfully restricted, hundreds of individuals will proceed to see their wage rise solely on paper whereas their payroll stays the identical, with a particular influence on ladies, who’re overrepresented within the SMI and within the lowest salaries. A phenomenon that introduces a transparent discriminatory bias and fuels a silent frustration that erodes belief within the labor system.
Because there may be nothing extra demoralizing than working extra, resisting extra and incomes the identical quantity. And as a result of a rustic that normalizes the truth that its lowest salaries don’t enhance, even when they formally rise, is giving up on constructing a fairer, extra productive and extra cohesive financial system.
https://elpais.com/economia/2026-01-31/cuando-el-salario-minimo-sube-pero-el-sueldo-no.html