The CEOE’s recently re-elected president warns that the rise in SMI is “intruding” on collective bargaining by “breaking” the pay scales of the agreements
Although the employers at the social dialogue table had already expressed their rejection of the second part of the pension reform proposed by the Ministry of Social Security, the Chairman of the CEOE, despite the fact that “it’s not serious” and has criticized the fact that employers are now being asked to sit down and talk when decisions have been made “without consultation”, such as the 8.6% increase in the 2023 maximum contribution base collected in Budgets.
Garamendi has denounced that the Executive’s proposal envisages that going forward, maximum contribution bases will increase with inflation plus an additional 1.15 points per year for a total of 25 years, representing an increase of at least 30% means. On the other hand, the maximum pension would only increase by 3% during this period. “That’s not serious,” the manager insisted. And he has insisted that pensions should be “sustainable” from a financial point of view, stating that what matters to him is not so much what his retirement pension will be, but that of his children.
The meeting the government held this Thursday with the social agents – the first after the proposal to extend the pension to 28 years was presented – is not that it ended without any progress, but also that the unions and businessmen. Social Security Minister José Luis Escrivá warned him that they will not negotiate this measure until they are sure there is enough political support for it to be approved in Congress. A support that seems impossible to this day, since all parliamentary groups – including Unidas Podemos and the rest of the government partners – have shown their absolute rejection of a proposal that presupposes a “reduction” of rights.
For this reason, Garamendi has urged the Toledo Pact to be the one to “ring the cat” as it is that parliamentary committee that, in his view, should sit down and talk about the future of pensions, calling it “coolly ” must analyze » and leave an issue like this outside the electoral space.
At the same time, he believes that the two main parties, PSOE and PP, should sit down and talk “seriously” about the pension issue, since updating pensions with the CPI costs 1,500 million euros for each point of inflation “which Die go to the structural spending of the country.” Garamendi finds it difficult to agree on the second part of the pension reform before the end of the year, as Escrivá wants, as the government papers “are from yesterday”. “He wants to approve it before December 31. We don’t see it”, he said.
It has also spoken out about the expected increase in the inter-occupational minimum wage (SMI), as this issue is “much deeper and more serious” than just an amount. After recalling that the SMI has increased by more than 30% in recent years, the company director warned how “dangerous” it is that the SMI “starts to exceed the very low salary scales of the collective agreements”.
“The SMI used to be 300,000 people, then 500,000 and now 1.5 million. We can get to the point where the SMI is practically like energy, a regulated issue,” said Garamendi. The company manager has warned that if a certain salary amount is agreed in an agreement, the government cannot skip that agreement because by raising the SMI a lot “it penetrates collective bargaining and absolutely breaks the salary scales”. “If the one below wins something like that and the government raises it that much, the others will ask me to raise the same,” he explained.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
