*Trade Union and Business sectors assured that the increase could raise the inflation rate
*Wage lags for workers earning the minimum wage are notorious in comparison with other countries
*Wage lags for workers earning the minimum wage are notorious in comparison with other countries
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00Different opinions have been generated of the minimum wage readjustment agreement in
00:04Colombia.
00:05What do the workers say about it?
00:06Let's see the details in the report by our colleague Hernando Barr.
00:13The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, decreed an increase in the minimum wage for workers
00:19after failing to reach an agreement between the business sector, trade union sectors,
00:23government representatives and workers.
00:25The proposals were far apart, with the workers proposing 12 percent and some business sectors
00:305 percent.
00:31Finally, the government opted for the figure of 9.54 percent.
00:41If the minimum wage grows, it makes the economy grow, not the contrary.
00:52It is not with slave workers that the economy of a country grows.
00:56It is with workers who earn and have dignity in their lives that the economy of a country
00:59grows.
01:08This mentality of believing that workers have to be slaves in Colombia has been preventing
01:12the approval of the labor reform.
01:14This does not serve Colombia.
01:20It has condemned it to misery and to be the most unequal society in the world.
01:32After this figure was made public, trade union and business sectors assured that this increase
01:36could not only raise the levels of informality, but also increase the inflation rate, which
01:41so far this year has been 4.72 percent.
01:43For analysts, there are other costs that profoundly affect small and medium-sized companies, thus
01:48ignoring other perspectives of the analysis and impact on the economy, much more than
01:53the minimum wage.
02:01There is a lot of criticism about this salary readjustment, but there is no criticism in
02:06terms of how much the banks are taking from the small and medium business sectors.
02:10The interventions of different unions have indicated that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs
02:14are going to have to lay off people because of this wage increase.
02:28But in no case has it been said that the financial costs, that is to say, what the banks keep
02:33in interest rates, also affects and affects in a much more important way the existence
02:39of micro, small and medium-sized companies.
02:48Unionized workers welcome this salary adjustment for 2025.
02:52A wage increase in the minimum wage of 9.54 percent, plus $200,000 pesos in the transportation
03:01allowance means that on average we have an increase of 11 percent over last year.
03:06This is a really important and significant figure for the increase in the minimum wage.
03:11This is a way to reduce the serious wage gap that the neoliberal and pro-business governments
03:15left us in the past.
03:21But what do other sectors of Colombia's workers think about it?
03:26What they should do is to control prices, and even if they have increased 9.54 percent,
03:31they should not let everybody increase 10 percent or more because then nothing was done.
03:37It would seem that the salary is the same standard.
03:39It does not go up and down.
03:41It is the same.
03:46Workers will go from receiving $1.333 to approximately $369.
03:52Despite this adjustment, the salary lags for workers earning the minimum wage in the country
03:56are notorious in comparison with other South American countries, ranking fifth according
04:00to the Static Statistics portal.
04:02Uruguay ranks first with an income of $556.