Alejandra Olcese
Updated Tuesday, February 6, 2024-13:55
SMI Agricultural employment has fallen by 15.6% and domestic employment, by 11.6%, since the SMI began to rise in 2018
This Tuesday in the Council of Ministers, the
Government
approved the
5% increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI)
to
1,134 euros
in fourteen payments (15,876 euros annually or 1,323 per month) and took advantage of the subsequent press conference to announce new salary increases in the coming years and to once again point out the Ibex 35 for the salary gap that exists between its directors and its workers.
"Today we take a step in the fight against precariousness," claimed
Yolanda Díaz,
second vice president and Minister of Labor, who points out that "Spain is 19 points away from the European salary averages, so we must continue doing an effort to raise salaries in our country, not just the SMI, to be able to compete above and not below and to have a better country (...) There are extreme cases, in which the distance between the salary of the directors of a company and its workers is not 54 times but 200 times, we have a pending democratic debate in our country about the distances that exist in the Ibex 35 and especially in banking," he pointed out.
The vice president has claimed the increase in the SMI as a tool that helps GDP grow and as an instrument to reduce the gender gap in pay, and has assured that it will continue to rise in the coming years. "We are going to continue raising salaries, not only with new increases in the SMI, but also by raising salaries with a measure that is the reduction of the working day without reducing salaries," she noted.
The increase in the SMI has been included in a royal decree-law that will be published this Wednesday in the Official State Gazette (BOE) and whose entry into force will take place retroactively
on January 1, 2024
, meaning that companies who have salaried workers collecting the SMI will have to update their next payroll and compensate them for the difference in the months they have already collected so far this year.
The measure has had the
support of the unions,
but does not have the approval of CEOE and Cepyme, which conditioned their support on modifying the Deindexation Law so that contracts could be updated and that bonuses in social contributions could be approved. companies in the
agricultural sector,
among those most affected by the increase and in which employment has been most affected in the last six years.
The Executive did not agree to either of these two conditions, so the employers did not accept the increase even if it was limited to 4%. Given his refusal to sign, the Executive finally chose to raise it by 5% to satisfy UGT and CCOO.
The Minister of Finance,
María Jesús Montero,
explained in the press conference after the Council that taxpayers who collect up to the SMI
will be exempt from paying personal income tax,
since the minimum amount will be raised to 15,876 euros. This increase in the exempt minimum will be included in the tax regulations, which have been modified today, as a provisional measure until the change in the General State Budget law can be endorsed.
"This measure will benefit
5.2 million taxpayers
who will save
1,385 million euros in 2024
," highlighted Montero. "Low and medium incomes will pay less taxes with the Government than those they paid with the Popular Party. For example, a person who earns 15,876 euros - the equivalent of today's SMI - paid 1,111 euros in personal income tax (7% withholding). , now with the tax reduction you will pay 0 euros," he gave as an example.
It is prohibited to reduce full time to part time
The Government has also taken advantage of the Council of Ministers to transpose the
directive on transparent
working conditions, pending since August 2022, by which "zero-hour contracts, on-call work and agreements that may worsen conditions are prohibited." Diaz explained.
With this new rule, companies must from now on put in writing in all employment contracts, regardless of their duration
, the essential conditions
- duration of the contract, the working day and its distribution and the trial period - or what Otherwise, they will be presumed indefinitely full-time and will be considered a serious infraction. Until now this obligation to put all conditions in writing, or otherwise presuppose the agreement as permanent full-time, did not affect contracts of less than four weeks.
"With this rule, on-call, zero-hour contracts are prohibited in Spain," highlighted the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, in the press conference after the Council of Ministers.
Díaz has also highlighted that with these changes, the
conversions of full-time work into part-time work
and vice versa, as well as the increase or decrease in the number of hours in part-time contracts, "will be voluntary for the worker and cannot be adopted on a voluntary basis." unilateral by the company".
In the case of
agreed additional hours,
the agreement must state the number of hours, days and reference hours in which the worker's services can be requested. Likewise, a
minimum notice of three days
is established
for carrying out these hours, a period that cannot be reduced by agreement. In the event of total or partial cancellation of said hours without respecting this notice period, it will imply the right to the corresponding remuneration.
The trial period cannot be extended
The adaptation of this rule also prohibits the
maximum duration of the trial period
from being extended by agreement. The maximum trial period is
six months
for qualified technicians and
two months
for the rest of the workers. In the case of temporary and fixed-term contracts of six or more months, the trial period may not be more than one month and in those of shorter duration it will be reduced in the same proportion.
Along with this, the Spanish regulations will include that the worker who has at least six months of seniority in the company will have the right to
apply for vacant positions
that have a full-time schedule or more than the one he or she enjoys, that are indefinite character or more predictable or stable.
These requests, explains the Ministry of Labor, must receive a
reasoned and written response within a period of 15 days
or within the period established by agreement as long as it does not exceed three months in the case of companies with staff of less than ten workers or a month if they have more than ten workers.
Companies may not prohibit, limit or grant unfavorable treatment to workers for providing services to other companies.
The rule carries different
sanctions
: failure to inform the worker in writing about the essential elements of the contract within the established terms and deadlines will be considered a serious infraction, while discrimination for being in multiple employment will be considered a very serious infraction.