2023-08-09 01:42:40
The wages agreed in collective agreements are beginning to recover purchasing power, but they will not do so nearly as much as inflation has risen. In the first seven months of this year, they revalued by 3.34%, which is why they are eight tenths higher than the rise in July last year (2.56%) and almost one tenth higher than that registered a month ago. In addition, they recover around one point of purchasing power over the advance data of the general consumer price index (CPI) for July, which the INE placed at 2.3%, although they are still almost three points below core inflation. located at 6.2%, after months of continuous losses that have been accumulating since 2022.
Likewise, this revaluation does not reach the general recommendation that the unions (CC OO and UGT) and employers (CEOE and Cepyme) agreed in May in the V Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC), which called for raising wages to least 4% this year and 3% in both 2024 and 2025. It does not even reach half of the revaluation approved by the Government and Parliament for the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI) for this year, which was estimated at 8%, and it does not reach the impulse of pensions either, at 8.5%. Even so, the average salary increase included in the registered agreements at least partly shortens the gap with the guidelines set by the AENC.
According to the statistics of collective agreements of the Ministry of Labour, the company agreements affect more than 500,000 workers and the sectoral ones, almost nine million, for which reason more than half of the Spanish workers continue outside the agreement, since the number of affiliated to Social Security exceeds 20.8 million. Of the total number of agreements signed, 609 have been signed and registered so far in 2023, affecting 179,738 companies and 2,167,200 workers. In company contracts, the salary increase was 3.03% until July, compared to 3% the previous month and 2.69% a year ago, while in agreements of a higher scope than the company an increase was agreed of 3.36%, compared to 3.28% in June and 2.56% in July 2022.
It must be taken into account that most of the agreements registered up to July were signed in previous years, even though they take effect in 2023. Counting only the 609 agreements signed this year, the salary variation was 4.18%. In this case, the revaluation not only complies with the 4% guideline agreed within the social dialogue, but also exceeds it by 0.18 points, giving protection to 8.93 million workers.
In these agreements, the agreed working hours were 1,769.5 hours per year. In the rest, the agreed working day amounted to 1,753.8 hours per year, a practically stagnant figure compared to that registered up to June (1,752.4 hours).
Regarding the wage guarantee clause, the data from July show that of those almost nine million workers covered by the agreement, only two million had this mechanism, which allows the salary to be revised upwards each year based on the CPI to Protect your purchasing power. By agreements, of the 2,885 registered, 416 have this salary guarantee clause: 289 with retroactive effects and 127 without these effects.
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