The month of January ends and, despite promises,
the Government did not convene the Minimum, Living and Mobile Wage Council
(SMVM).
And there are no certainties about when he could be called.
Thus, the Minimum Wage and Unemployment Benefits
remain at the December values,
despite the fact that it is estimated that the increase in January prices could be between 20 and 24%.
In 2023, the minimum wage had an increase of 151.8% compared to an inflation of 211.4%.
A loss of 19%
.
In relation to the basic food basket, the drop was greater, 25%.
In reality, the SMVM Council
should have been convened in December
to define the values for the first months of 2023. Then, it was promised to convene it for the first days of January and then between the 20th and 30th of this month.
The SMVM for December was $156,000 for monthly payments or $780 per hour.
In December 2022 it was $61,953 monthly or $309.77 per hour.
The SMVM Commission brings together
union members
from the CGT and CTA and
business representatives such as the UIA
.
It constitutes a kind of
national parity
that can set the percentages of salary increases that unions and employers would be willing to agree to for all activities.
According to CIFRA (Research and Training Center of the Argentine Republic), “the purchasing power of the minimum, vital and mobile wage has shown a negative trend since 2011, which was particularly strong in the last two years of Mauricio Macri's government as well as in 2020. "This drop has been even greater than the real loss of registered wages."
Then, “between 2021 and 2022, in a context of growing inflation, there were seven instances of updating the minimum wage, which
did not achieve a recovery of its purchasing power
.”
The year 2022 closed with an average drop in the real minimum wage of 1.3%, which placed it 33% below the 2015 level.”
With the loss of 2023, the drop is 45%.
The Employment Contract Law assigns three characteristics to the minimum wage, vital and mobile.
It is the lowest remuneration that the worker without family responsibilities
must receive in cash for his working day.
It must ensure adequate food, decent housing, education, clothing, health care, transportation, recreation, vacations and pension coverage.
And
it must be adjusted periodically
according to variations in the cost of living.
It is more than evident that those who receive the SMVM, plus the eventual collection of the family salary per child, find it impossible to cover all the requirements established by the Employment Contract Law when
the poverty basket for a typical family is around $500,000,
without compute the rent.
Thus, the SMVM is not minimum, it is not vital or mobile in relation to the level and rise of prices.
The minimum wage affects registered monthly or daily workers who earn less than the minimum monthly or hourly wage.
And indirectly as
a reference to unregistered or informal workers.
It also
impacts the Income Tax exemption
for workers who earn less than 15 SMVM (today $2,340,000)
It also influences the non-attachment fee for salaries, which is equivalent to the amount of the minimum wage, except for food debts.
From this value, an increasing percentage is applied to the difference between the salary received and the SMVM.
In addition,
it adjusts the minimum retirement for those who retired with 30 or more years of contributions
without resorting to moratoriums.
In those cases it must be equivalent to 82% of the SMVM.
In turn, the unemployment benefit cannot be less than 50% nor more than 100% of the current Minimum Living and Mobile Wage, depending on the employee's seniority in the company in which he or she was dismissed without just cause.
NE