Government will approve €15 increase to minimum wage tomorrow

The €15 euros increase per month to the national minimum wage will be approved tomorrow, said Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Speaking in Santander, Sanchez said the new national minimum wage of €965 will be approved by the council of Ministers Tuesday, September 28.

“In 2018 we started from a minimum wage of €735 and in 2021, after this rise, it will be €965. We are talking about 230 euros of increase in just three years and with a pandemic in between,” he said.

“Without cohesion there is no development. Continuing to advance the rise of Minimum Interprofessional Salary is not only a matter of social justice and dignity but of undoubted economic benefit,” he added.

Although welcomed by trade unions and supported by the ruling PSOE’s coalition partners Podemos, of which the current minister for labour Yolanda Diaz is a member, the hike is not without controversary.

The Bank of Spain said the last minimum wage hike may have backfired and cost the country 180,000 jobs, an argument now being used against another raise.

Diaz however has dismissed linking the two as an “enormous mistake” and “pure ideology”.

The Bank estimated that the 22 per cent rise in the minimum interprofessional wage launched by the current government caused the labour market to slow down.

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