The Spanish government and unions agree to raise the minimum wage to €1,221, despite opposition from employers.

BarcelonaThe Ministry of Labor and the UGT and CCOO unions, but not the employers' associations, have agreed this Thursday to raise the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI). 1,221 euros gross in 14 paymentsThis represents a 3.1% increase compared to 2025. It's a rise of 37 euros per month, as announced by the Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey. The Council of Ministers will soon approve the salary increase, which will be retroactive to January 1st of this year. The employers' associations CEOE and Cepyme have distanced themselves from the agreement and rejected the increase, as anticipated in the statement released Thursday morning, in which they labeled the tax deduction in corporate income tax for the companies most affected by the pay increase as "deceptive" and "interventionist." According to the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Labor and the unions agree that this salary level will remain exempt from personal income tax.

"We haven't been able to include employers' associations in this social dialogue agreement, as we would have liked. We negotiated tirelessly, we gave it our all. We explored proposals and counter-proposals so that the CEOE and Cepyme could join us today for the presentation of this minimum interprofessional wage agreement," but ultimately, they didn't agree.

The minimum wage increase agreed upon with CCOO and UGT represents an additional 37 euros per month compared to the 2025 amount (1,184 euros per month), or 518 euros more per year, without income tax implications. This is the sixth consecutive year that the government has negotiated a minimum wage increase with the unions, but without the employers' associations. The last time CEOE and Cepyme supported an increase in this minimum income was in 2020, when it rose from 900 to 950 euros per month.

Reform to avoid takeovers

The Deputy Minister of Labor also stated that, within the framework of the agreement with the unions, the Ministry committed to "moving forward" with a reform of the decree on minimum interprofessional wages so that salary supplements cannot be absorbed by the increase in the minimum wage. "Therefore, in the agreement with the unions, we will also, and in parallel, carry out a reform of the absorption and compensation rules, so that those 37 euros go directly into the pockets of workers and are not lost along the way, because it is unacceptable that those who may work in dangerous conditions should receive at least the minimum wage," he emphasized. This reform, the Secretary of State clarified, will be carried out through a Royal Decree for the transposition of the European minimum wage directive, without the need for a law, since, contrary to what employers maintain, the Ministry of Labor has "solid legal grounds" to do so through this route and not through other means. The negotiating table did not address the Finance Ministry's proposal to establish a tax incentive, through a reduction in the corporate tax base, aimed at companies to encourage hiring with salaries above the minimum wage. After acknowledging that this proposal was not the one preferred by the Ministry of Labor – which advocates for indexing the minimum wage in public contracts – Pérez Rey explained that this measure was not discussed at today's meeting. "The Ministry of Labor decided not to submit the Finance Ministry's proposal to the social dialogue table because it considers it a waste of time, and we are not here to waste time," he emphasized.