Minimum wage in Spain to be frozen for 2012

The wage will remain at 641 €

Photo EFE

Unions sources say that the Government is to freeze the minimum wage for 2012 at 641 €. The inter-professional minimum wage in Spain is one of the lowest in Europe.

For 2011 the minimum wage for 12 monthly payments in Euros, according to Eurostat is as follows.
Luxembourg – 1,757.50
Ireland – 1,461.80
Holland – 1,424.40
Belgium – 1,415.20
France – 1,365.00
U.K. – 1,138.50
USA – 940.40
Greece – 862.80
Spain – 748.30
Slovenia – 748.10
Malta – 664.90
Portugal – 565.80
Turkey – 384.80
Croatia – 381.10
Poland – 348.60
Czech Republic – 319.20
Slovakia – 317
Lithuania – 281.90
Hungary – 280.60
Estonia 278.0
Lithuania 231.70

The Minimum Wage in Spain has been losing purchasing power having been increased in both 2010 and 2011 at less than the IPC inflation rate. This year annual inflation in November was 2.9% at the end of November, so minimum wage workers are set to lose even more purchasing power.

For workers who are part time for the same company and do not exceed 120 days a year, the minimum wage is 30.39 € a day, and for those domestic workers who are paid by the hour the minimum is 5.02 € per hour worked.

Both the CCOO and UGT unions had written to the previous Minister for Employment, Valeriano Gómez, calling for the minimum wage to be inflation linked. In that letter the unions said that the economic crisis ‘cannot be used as an excuse to forget the objective of reaching a minimum wage which is 60% of the average wage in the country’.

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