Sánchez assaults the employers for rejecting the rise within the minimal wage and calls for that firms elevate salaries: “Let them pay more” | Economy | EUROtoday

The Ministry of Labor and the unions UGT and CC OO have sealed this Monday the rise within the interprofessional minimal wage (SMI) for 2026. The settlement, within the phrases that had been closed on January 29, contemplates elevating the remuneration ground to 1,221 gross euros in 14 funds, 3.1% greater than in 2025. The protocol signing of the pact, held on the ministerial headquarters and starring Yolanda Díaz, Pepe Álvarez and Unai Sordo, on this event had the presence of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in a gesture with a particular political cost. The solely time that the Chief Executive had participated within the occasion to endorse the rise within the SMI was in 2020, exactly the final time that the employers’ affiliation additionally participated within the settlement. The context couldn’t be extra totally different: this Monday, Sánchez strongly attacked businessmen for not supporting the brand new enhance, which might be made official this Tuesday within the Council of Ministers.

“The employers have decided not to be here,” stated the President of the Government. “It is the one that has decided to delete itself from this agreement. What is not acceptable is that in a context of economic prosperity, the salary of those who earn the minimum is looked at with a magnifying glass while there are million-dollar benefits,” he added. And in a really essential speech with CEOE and Cepyme, Sánchez insisted: “When it’s time to tighten our belts, we all tighten it and when it’s time to share, we all do it. Let no one tell us that we cannot raise salaries when profits grow. The Government is doing it with what is in its power, the SMI and Public Service. I ask the employers to do their part, to pay more. Let us go to raise salaries where there is not one yet.”

Until now, it was traditional for the President of the Government to take part within the signing of agreements that had been endorsed by all the social dialogue, each by employers and unions. That was the case of the final pension reform, which was sealed in La Moncloa in September 2024.

The CEOE has insisted on its place this Monday, after Sánchez’s harsh speech. “We already opposed it because it is not only based on an erroneous initial calculation by the experts, but also represents a serious interference in collective bargaining,” signifies a spokesperson for the enterprise affiliation. Businessmen make this evaluation as a result of they contemplate that elevating the enterprise ground a lot isn’t acceptable in lots of sectors. “That said, we must think that while self-employed workers, small businessmen and farmers will pour 1,782 million euros into the economy with the SMI, the Government is not providing the means to stop the drain of 33,000 million euros that is going down the drain due to poor management of the losses,” provides the group chaired by Antonio Garamendi.

For his half, Díaz harassed in his speech that Sánchez “has always been where he had to be, on the right side of history.” “With agreements and disagreements, we have had powerful and intense discussions,” indicated the second vice chairman and Minister of Labor, earlier than emphasizing that the Government intends to proceed with its reformist agenda: “We have much left to do. We are going to approve the new time register, the reduction of working hours, to avoid unpaid overtime, to protect against unfair dismissal, to regulate the platforms that want to return to the 19th century…”.

At a time when his political management is questioned by totally different voices on the left, Díaz has demanded the advance of the labor market since he led Labor and the “need” to proceed alongside the identical strains. “When the forces of reaction believe that their time has come, I say that this Government will continue to advance. The best tool against hopelessness is rights, as has always happened in the history of the labor movement.”

Without the necessity for parliamentary approval

The annual enhance within the minimal wage is without doubt one of the dates marked in crimson on the Government’s calendar, because it is without doubt one of the most necessary financial insurance policies that doesn’t require parliamentary validation. Thus, the right-wing majority in Congress can’t cease this initiative, because it did with the discount of working hours and as is anticipated with different initiatives of Díaz’s division, such because the reform of severance pay.

The occasion has loved extra projection than in earlier increments, with the presence of representatives of a number of skilled and civil associations, in addition to the senior employees of the unions. The first vice chairman and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, additionally attended; the Minister of Education, Milagros Tolón; the Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy; the Minister of Social Security and spokesperson for the Executive, Elma Saiz; and the president of Congress, Francina Armengol.

With this enhance, the interprofessional minimal wage continues the climb of latest years. Since 2018, when Pedro Sánchez acceded to the Executive by way of the movement of censure towards Mariano Rajoy, the SMI has grown by 66% together with this new enhance. From 736 to 1,221 gross euros per thirty days in 14 funds. In the identical interval, costs have grown by 23%, which suggests a achieve in buying energy of the wage ground of about 40 factors. According to CC OO calculations, this enhance (retroactive from January 1) will profit 1.66 million salaried individuals, 9% of the entire. The Government estimates a a lot larger influence, of two.5 million beneficiaries.

The common secretary of UGT, Pepe Álvarez, has harassed that the rise particularly advantages “women, young people and the territories with the most difficulties, where salaries are lower.” Like Sánchez, he has accused the employers for not elevating the remainder of the salaries extra: “If I were here, I would have to explain why the SMI is eating up a good part of the collective agreements.”

His counterpart at CC OO, Unai Sordo, has highlighted that the will increase within the SMI serve to “avoid situations of scandalous precariousness that can be generalized in contemporary societies, unless unionism and politics confront them.” “If seven years ago we asked any economist mainstream What would have happened if we raised the minimum wage by these magnitudes, they would have said that unemployment was going to skyrocket,” Sordo added. On the back of an expansive economic cycle in recent years, Spain now registers a historical record of workers and the lowest unemployment rate since 2008 (although it is still the highest rate in the European Union).

Absorption of pluses

The agreement to raise the minimum wage also strengthens a commitment of the Government with the unions that is overdue: to prevent by decree that companies can absorb the increase in the SMI with the elimination of salary bonuses. The plants have already signed the previous increase, making it conditional on it, but the Executive insists that this time they will undertake this change and that they will do so by decree, without the need for Parliament to endorse it. This decree was not approved this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers.

The employers’ association, which flatly rejects this possibility, believes that this modification would invade the legislative scope and that it demands a bill. Hence, it has announced its intention to go to court if the Government fulfills this promise to the unions.

The agreement sealed by Labor and the centers establishes the commitment that the Government approve “new absorption and compensation rules with full respect for collective bargaining.” The textual content establishes that dietary supplements “that accrue because of the circumstances underneath which the exercise is supplied; residence, these linked to intrinsic traits of the employee; these associated to the amount or high quality of labor or these whose non-compensable nature is supplied for within the relevant collective agreements” will be excluded.

CEOE and Cepyme also reject the increase, as does the formula that the Treasury proposed to try to attract them. It consisted of an increasing tax deduction for companies that hired above the minimum wage, reviled for its forms (it reached the press at the same time as social agents) and for its content (it was classified by CEOE as “trilera” and “interventionist”). That employer rejection, before the last meeting to address the increase in the SMI, as well as the fact that Labor did not like the proposal either, meant that the idea was not even raised at the negotiating table.

On the opposite hand, for one more 12 months the SMI is exempt from paying private revenue tax. This 12 months, not like earlier years, the same old struggle between Labor and the Treasury over this matter has not been reproduced. What’s extra, Díaz’s ministry had ready the bottom in order that, this 12 months, the wage ground could be taxed, by asking the specialists who advocate the rise to mission a situation with taxation and one other with out it. However, opposite to what she had been claiming in recent times, this time María Jesús Montero positioned herself in favor of renewing the exemption by way of a bonus, a place that coincides with that of Labor. This exemption might be accepted within the Council of Ministers this Tuesday.