This Thursday, the Ministry of Labor closed an agreement with the unions and without the employers to raise the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) by 3.1% this year, reaching 1,221 gross euros per month in 14 payments and maintaining it without paying personal income tax. Despite the Government’s attempt to attract employers to an agreement with fiscal aid, business organizations have rejected the measure, amidst harsh criticism, and also the increase in the SMI.
The interprofessional minimum wage, now at 1,184 gross euros per month, will therefore increase by 37 euros per month in 2026. “518 euros more per year,” highlighted the Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey. The department headed by Yolanda Diaz estimates that the salary improvement will reach around 2.5 million workers.
With this increase, the Government accumulates minimum wage increases of a total of almost 66% since 2018, when Pedro Sánchez arrived at Moncloa. Pérez Rey has highlighted that the Executive has made a multitude of efforts, “with proposals and counterproposals”, to try to bring the employers into an agreement, and has regretted that in the end “it was not possible”.
The 3.1% increase proposed by Yolanda Díaz’s department was the lowest recommended by the committee of experts that advises the Ministry of Labor on increases in the SMI, designed for the scenario in which workers who collect it continue without paying personal income tax, as the Ministry of Finance has ultimately decided.
The increase seeks to compensate for the increase in prices (with the inflation data from last October), to thus guarantee the purchasing power of workers who earn this legal minimum. According to experts, the increase in 2026 will place the minimum wage somewhat above the goal committed by the Government (that the SMI reaches 60% of the average salary)
The CCOO and UGT unions had demanded an increase of 7.5% and that it be taxed for the first time, and the businessmen, an increase of 1.5%, like that of civil servants for this year.
Pact so that the bonuses are not absorbed
The Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey, has also announced that the agreement with the unions includes the commitment of the Ministry of Yolanda Díaz to “carry out” a reform so that companies cannot absorb (reduce) salary supplements due to the increase in the minimum wage.
CCOO and UGT demanded this condition to support the increase in the SMI this year, since they denounce that there are many workers, with earnings very close to the minimum wage, to whom the increases do not reach because employers compensate them with the de facto reduction of these bonuses, a practice that has been supported by the Supreme Court. “Without this there would be no agreement with the union organizations,” said Fernando Luján, deputy general secretary of Union Policy of the UGT.
“It is not possible that these 518 euros are lost along the way, that they do not reach the pockets of working people,” argued Pérez Rey, who called it “injustice” that companies absorb supplements linked to specific causes, such as dangerousness. “The danger of work does not change before and after the increase in the minimum wage,” said the Secretary of State.
Yolanda Díaz’s department intends to approve the measure in a royal decree, which will transpose the European minimum wage directive. That is, a regulation, without the status of law, and therefore does not have to go through Parliament.
The employers’ association denounces that it is not possible to adopt this bonus reform without legislation, so everything indicates that it will take the decree to court if it is approved. For their part, the Ministry of Labor and the unions have insisted this Thursday on its legal fit.
CEOE and Cepyme have sent a statement to reject the increase with the SMI, very harsh with the Government’s commitment to shield certain causal bonuses, “breaking collective bargaining, which will lead to an exponential increase in costs and will suffocate a large number of companies.”
Criticism of the “circus” with tax aid
The representatives of the unions, Javier Pacheco (CCOO) and Fernando Luján (UGT), have celebrated the pact with the Ministry of Labor, who have maintained that it could not be delayed any further. Although the SMI is going to be approved with retroactive effect from January 1, worker organizations have criticized that the salary improvement was taking too long to try to attract the employers to an agreement with several proposals.
Among them, the fiscal aid proposed by the Ministry of Finance in the Corporate Tax, which the department of María Jesús Montero proposed as an alternative to the request of Labor and social agents to allow public contracts already awarded to be updated with the increase in the SMI.
The unions, which had already been suspicious of the tax incentive, condemned this Thursday that it was leaked to the press before sending it to the social agents, which they called a “circus” and a “sainete.”
However, CCOO and UGT have warned that the employers have not stopped putting up obstacles and asking for compensation for what they consider to be a moderate increase in the minimum wage, since the 3.1% increase is below the salary increases that are being agreed in the collective agreements. “It is an insult to intelligence that they put so many obstacles in place,” criticized Javier Pacheco, confederal secretary of Trade Union Action of CCOO.
“CEOE and CEPYME want to point out emphatically that we have never seen such a clear lack of respect and contempt for social dialogue as what we are witnessing these days,” the employers’ associations have denounced.
Source: www.eldiario.es
