The Spanish Government raised in October the margin for negotiating the General Budgets of the Basque Autonomous Community in the presentation of the agreement with Podemos. Measures in the field of labour include raising the minimum gross wage to EUR 900, which is divided into 14 pay per year. This opens up the possibility of giving impetus and generality to the commitment of the social partners to reach EUR 14,000 per year by 2020. This measure, which has generated a debate on the complements and the rules of law, has taken a new step this week in Congress to achieve this improvement.

The adoption of this measure has generated in-depth theoretical discussions on the technical aspects and political competence. And we know how the theoretical discrepancies that appear in the antechamber are: everyone has the habit of maintaining their own framework as an invariable law, extending to the four winds arguments that are not acceptable to many others. The most classic argument we have heard among the most classic is that the minimum wage will increase unemployment. Neoliberal economists solve labor relations problems in the “labor market”, leaving aside the demand effect of the increase in all, especially the lowest, incomes. Disregarding the links with living conditions and the conflict of distribution, the wages for them is nothing more than the cost of production, and when they oppose increasing the cost of labor, they are in favor of maintaining the number of employees, arguing that it is an unquestionable law of economists.

Critical economists often struggle with this error by questioning the relationship between wage setting and the number of employees. The Keynesians say that entrepreneurs hire it for the workload, not for the wage measure established through social standards. According to Marxists, the fixing of wages has benefits in the shadow, there is the key to the distribution conflict. When raising the SMI, it is not so much the number of people employed and the number of contracts that are at risk, but the possibilities of selling goods and services on the market (who buys the products if not the majority of workers?) And the struggle between social classes is at the heart of this debate.

Beyond the minimum salaries for full-time work, there is an urgent need to resolve the problems that remain outside this conflict. At a time when one third of women are in part-time employment, other measures must be taken to alleviate the disadvantages generated by labour relations, emphasising the need to close a gap in the working and salary conditions of women. In Spain, less than €864 is raised for every two million euros and in 2019 the trend of the majority, especially women and anyone with material shortages, is expected to increase.

The economist Jorge Uxo has stated that to leave the crisis behind it is necessary to raise all wages, more than the minimum ones, and has denounced the wage imbalance and the productivity of productive relations in Spain during the “lost decade” of recent years. It is serious that the wage gap in relation to GDP in this period is so large, and beyond the living conditions of the workers, we can consider them as an indicator of the ongoing crisis generated by this capitalist and patriarchal system. Reactivation is frequently extolled in recent times, decreeing the end of the European Union crisis. But are there sufficient profits and sales have been recovered, if not the solution built for the benefit of growth?

Women are the ones who suffer most from this crisis and this poor recovery, but every immigrant and young person is also physically and spiritually forced by the imposition of this new context. Cuts in young people’s working conditions in recent years have been particularly severe, and real wages have fallen significantly between today’s and the not-so-young compared to the previous generation.

Wage increases are at least as necessary a step, one of the main instruments that we should put on the path of transforming the economic model. But it is not the conflict of distribution that is the only problem of capitalism, ecological sustainability and, above all, the direction of production and the ownership of resources that we should question. As Bernard Friot says: “The inability of class authorities to propose a path other than the deterioration of living conditions, rights and public services will lead to a rebellion by European countries in the absence of a common future.” Let's see.

This news was posted by El Salto and we brought it to ARGIA thanks to the CC-by-sa license.