The negotiation of the minimum wage, one of the most anticipated discussions of the economic and social calendar in Colombia, does not yet start formally and is already surrounded by a rare -raised environment, given that what should be a scenario of tripartite dialogue between government, entrepreneurs and unions, is emerging more as a pulse marked by distrust mutual and the perception that the agreement could become a mere political procedure.
The controversy broke out after the revelation that President Gustavo Petro would have given the order to increase the minimum wage by 11% by decree, a fact that ignited the alarms in the business sector and led Fenalco to announce that I would not participate in the table, considering that the decision was taken beforehand.
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“Fenalco will not participate in the Concertación table because it is a mockery, yes or yes Petro already announced it, so yes or yes he already said it, the salary will be by decree and it will be eleven percent, so why is that concentration table? What agreement?” Said the spokesman of the merchants.
Then, Labor Minister Antonio Sanguino criticized the position of the merchants And he described it as pets and politics, highlighting that “it seems very curious to me, that he retires from a table that has not yet been installed. That what he reveals is a repeated behavior of Mr. Jaime Alberto Cabal in the sense that he behaves more as a political opponent than as a union leader who represents the shopkeepers and merchants.
December will be the key month to determine the future of the minimum wage.
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Beyond the statements on one side and the other, at this time the debate moves towards a more complex land and is the distance between the parties, the clashes of interest and the lack of confidence over the true scope of the agreement, since the backdrop is not only the percentage of increase, but the credibility of the social dialogue as an institution in a country in which more than 20 million people depend on what is agreed or decreed on the minimum salary.
A rare -off atmosphere
Analysts agree that the stage is tense and polarized. Juliana Morad, director of the Department of Labor Law of the Javeriana University, points out that the table arrives conditioned by a new decree that will allow Negotiation by industry sector and by economic sector, with even geographical scope.
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“This means that, for the first time in the country, the unions will be able to propose broader sheets that impact entire sectors and not only a company,” said Morad, who recalled that in that context, the minimum salary agretion table does not develop in a vacuum, but in an environment where labor costs already come on the rise.
“The recent labor reform, the entry into force of the new night day In December and the increases of previous years have increased loads for employers. The business sector is very worried and considers that the technical component is being ignored, ”he said.
December will be the key month to determine the future of the minimum wage.
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Thus, he called on the parties, so that beyond giving particular interests, what the country needs is a realistic analysis that takes into account the economic impact of decisions and not just political calculation.
Distrust in the center
The skepticism is also highlighted by Iván Quintero Martínez, partner of Quintero and Quintero Advisors, for whom, perhaps for the first time in recent history, the one who should give the most is the government, since the decision on the minimum wage depends multiple variables that affect employment, formality, inflation and the pocket of all Colombians.
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“Listening to some spokesmen, it seems that the most interested in decreeing the increase is the Government itself, introducing a more political than technical element in a very high macroeconomic sensitivity decision,” he says.
That point, he says, explains a good part of the skepticism of entrepreneurs and analystsit is perceived that the agreement is not part of a negotiation on equal terms, but of a decision already taken from the Casa de Nariño.
December will be the key month to determine the future of the minimum wage.
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From another edge, Pedro Villamizar’s gaze, a law professor and director of the Legal Office of the University of San Buenaventura in Bogotá, reinforces the idea that what is at stake transcends the final figure, since for him, the Concertación Board is much more than a space for economic discussion and represents the fulfillment of the constitutional principle of social dialogue and the mandate of Law 278 of 1996, which created the Permanent Commission of Concertación.
From that perspective, tripartism suffers when one of the actors, such as Fenalco, marginalizes the table and warns that “the concertation starts weakened, because it is not just about reaching a number, but about building trust between historically faced actors. Without that base, the table loses its reason for being and is reduced to a procedure. ”
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Villamizar explained that the minimum wage has a triple dimension, in which, from the economic imports because its increase defines labor and life costs in multiple areas such as transport rates to fines and public services. “In the legal, because it materializes rights and duties in the labor framework. And in the symbolic, because it represents the country’s ability to reach basic consensus,” he said.
That is why he insists that success does not depend only on finding a percentage, but that government, entrepreneurs and unions achieve that they are capable of giving in accessory to safeguard the sustainability of employment, the protection of real income and social cohesion, which it considers as the essential part of the table.
December will be the key month to determine the future of the minimum wage.
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With all this, for the three experts, the critical point is not only if the minimum wage will rise 11% or 12%; but the way in which the issue is being discussed, since the way the decision will be made will mark the credibility of the agreement and its ability to continue being a legitimate meeting forum. If it is perceived that the government imposes, the entrepreneurs marginalize and The unions press without attending technical criteria, the table runs the risk of emptying meaning.
In the coming weeks, the table must be formally installed and for now everything indicates that it will be done in an environment loaded with distrust, where each word and each gesture will be interpreted as signs of good or bad faith and now the challenge is to keep alive the principle of social dialogue in a country where the extremes usually master the debate.
Daniel Hernández Naranjo
Portfolio journalist
