The meeting to agree on the increase in the Minimum Wage (SMI) ended yesterday after barely an hour and a half of meeting between the Government and the social partners without any progress and with a climate clouded by previous threats to employers by the Secretary of State for Labour and Social Economy, Joaquín Pérez Rey.
“If we do not reach an agreement around the figure of 4%, if the Spanish employers do not align themselves to sign an agreement with the Government, the Government will naturally dissociate itself from that figure, will seek a bipartite agreement, as it has done on other occasions, and will try to agree with the unions on a rise in the minimum wage which, obviously, cannot be 4%, we are therefore prepared to make a more ambitious increase”, remarked Pérez Rey.
“The employers have to understand that if they do not enter into an agreement, they will pay the consequences of not doing so,” he said in statements reported by Efe.
The employers’ association refuses to sign up to the 4% increase if it is not guaranteed that this increase will also be reflected in the renewal of public contracts, something which the Treasury has refused to do for the moment.
