The Minister of Finance in Chile, Mario Marcel, referred to the agreement reached with the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) so that the minimum wage reaches $400.00 pesos (472 dollars) in August this year. In a conversation with Radio Duna, the head of the Treasury mentioned that the project as a whole would add a fiscal cost of around 850 million dollars.
“A part of that is provisioned and is included within the resources that are reserved in the budget for increases in this type of benefit that occur every year and another part will come from emergency funds that have not yet been used” Marcel explained.
In addition, the minister announced that micro and small companies (MSMEs) will have support to be able to face this increase in the minimum income, although the corresponding announcement will be made soon by the Minister of Economy, Nicolás Grau.
This is going to be a support that is going to last several months, it is not going to be permanent, it is going to be transitory, it is going to be reduced little by little. But that will allow micro and small businesses to absorb the increase in the minimum income without a risk to employment, which is the concern”, he mentioned.
The minister also ruled out the risk that the increase represents a risk of informal employment training in MSMEs, since it is necessary for the company to be formalized to receive the benefit.
For their part, SME unions rejected the government-CUT agreement and claim to have been “excluded.” They demanded a dialogue that, according to what they stated, was held behind the “backs” of the SMEs, which are the ones that “generate 70% of the minimum wages and 53% of the country’s jobs.”
“It is a lack of consideration for those of us who pay the most the minimum wage,” they said from the entity led by Marcos Rivas. “Those who are most related to the minimum wage were heard, but not listened to. We were excluded,” they questioned.
From Asech, they expressed that “the CUT does not represent the workers of the MSMEs, but the government negotiates with them.” Going deeper into their annoyance, they warned that “the government listened to the opinion of the SMEs an hour before they announced what they had resolved with the big company and the CUT.
SMEs are the ones that will have to pay 70% of the workers who today have the minimum wage. And they did not feel considered in the discussion. The government proposal presented today is different from the one presented to us 10 days ago by the Minister of Economy, Nicolás Grau.”