Although President Javier Milei publicly rejected any possibility of
establishing by decree the increase in the minimum wage
after the failure of negotiations between businessmen and union members last Thursday, the Government has no other option than to comply with the current legislation and
unilaterally establish the updating the salary floor
through the mechanism of an award from the Ministry of Labor.
The definition, which was insistently demanded by the leadership of the CGT in the last hours,
will be known on Tuesday
, on the edge of the legal deadline to make the increase official, according to sources from the libertarian administration.
The proportion of the increase in the minimum wage, a key tool for determining the amount of the benefit of the Empower Work plan, the value of minimum pensions and the salary floor from which workers are covered by the Income Tax, will arise of the
conversations initiated by the labor authorities
headed by the Secretary of Labor, Omar Yasín, with the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo.
The Government's commitment is
to establish an increase for a limited period
(bimonthly or quarterly) and an update scheme
of around 45% or 50% is being analyzed that would take the minimum from the current $156,000 to a figure of between $220,000 and $ 230,000
, slipped from the Executive.
"The idea is to reach April with the increase," commented an official spokesperson in line with Milei and Caputo's expectation of achieving by that time a slowdown in inflation and the improvement of economic indicators.
In any case, the increase they are evaluating is far from the
proposal raised by the CGT and the two CTAs
within the framework of the frustrated Salary Council, where they demanded an
85% update since February to raise it to $288,600
, an initiative that was rejected in two opportunities for representatives of the business sector.
"There will be no decree, the increase will be established by ruling of the Secretary of Labor, as established by law," official sources confirmed regarding the definition of the new minimum increase.
That decision was confirmed after Héctor Daer, one of the members of the CGT leadership triumvirate, announced this Sunday that the labor union will take the necessary legal measures for the Government to set the new increase in the salary floor.
"It is a legal obligation that when there is no agreement on salary, the Government has to make an award.
We are going to demand that it generate the award and if it does not do so we will go to court
," warned the union leader.
It happens that, as anticipated by
Clarín
, law 24013 that regulates the operation of the Salary Council establishes in its article 137 that in the absence of agreement between business and union representatives in two sessions of the tripartite body, the president of the same - in this case Yasín - must provide through an award for the increase of the floor.
And he has a period of 3 business days to make that decision official, which will be fulfilled on Tuesday.
Beyond the union pressure, which escalated over the weekend with strong warnings from the CGT leadership about the
possibility of calling a new general strike,
the increase in the salary floor constitutes a key definition for the Government because it has a direct impact on public accounts.
On the one hand, it has a full impact on the amount of the
Empower Work
plans , which more than 1.2 million unemployed people receive.
Currently that benefit, which is equivalent to half the minimum wage, is $78,000.
With the increase projected by the Government it would be between $110,000 and $115,000.
Something similar occurs with the minimum assets of those who retire with 30 years of contributions or more (around 1.5 million retirees), whose benefit by law must be equal to 82% of the salary floor.
Additionally, the recomposition of the minimum wage also has effects for medium and high-income workers as it updates the income floor from which they are reached by the payment
of Income Tax
, a threshold that is currently equivalent to 15 minimum wages.
Outside of the effects of the increase in the minimum wage on public accounts, the definition also constitutes the main reference for the evolution of salaries in the informal sector and updates the income of some 300 thousand private workers outside the agreement.
It even works as a first reference for activities that have not yet started their joint negotiations.