Colombia, readjustment of the minimum wage has generated diverse opinions among citizens

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*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

Transcript

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.

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