Spanish government approves raising the minimum wage – Prensa Latina

02 December 2016, 12:56 pmMadrid, 2 dec (PL) The government of conservative Spanish today announced an increase of eight per cent of the minimum wage by 2017, increase qualified as insufficient by the main trade union organisations and left-wing parties.

In virtue of a decree approved by the Council of Ministers, the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) will go from the current 655,20 euros to 707,60 euros a month.

This upload was agreed between the right-wing Popular Party (PP), the president of the Government Mariano Rajoy; and the Spanish Socialist workers Party (PSOE), the main opposition, according to which it is the largest increase in that pay in 30 years.

however, it is lower to the one proposed by Comisiones Obreras and the General Workers Union, who claimed 800 euros for 2017, and a progressive extension of the compensation until reaching the thousand euros in 2020.

For both stations, the increase ‘would recover the purchasing power lost in recent years’, and would approach the SMI to 60 percent of the average wage net, a goal that sets the European Social Charter, signed by this nation of spain.

The two labour centres and majority of Spain criticized with hardness the procedure employed by Rajoy, the stealing of the social dialogue, a negotiation as the SMI and situate it in the political arena and in parliament, in reference to the agreement between the PP and the PSOE.

‘Even more serious is the decision of adopting it at a Council of Ministers as Royal Decree-Law devaluing, if not denying, the democratic debate in the Parliament’, reported in a press release.

The figure is also below 800 euros is requested on a proposition of law, approved last week in the Congress of Deputies at the request of United we Can, a third grouping in parliament.

The leader of we Can, Pablo Churches, has criticised the rise of eight per cent of the salary agreed between popular and socialist by considering that it represents only a few ‘crumbs’ to workers.

‘That intend to present a few crumbs as an achievement when what you are doing is violating the decisions of the Parliament, it seems to me serious’, noted the leader of the coalition formed by Can and the United Left.

That last game said that the extent agreed by the PP and the PSOE are seeking to ‘convert on wet paper, the ambitious proposition of law of United we Can, already endorsed by the lower House, which had a rise up to 800 euros a month.

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