The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced this Wednesday a 12% minimum wage increase by 2025the first of his mandate, in which he has promised that the basic salary will allow the purchase of 2.5 basic baskets in 2030.
With the increase, the national minimum wage will reach 278.8 pesos per day ($13.94) nationwide starting in January from a previous figure of 248.93 pesos ($12.44), while on the northern border of Mexico it will amount to 419.88 pesos (20.99 dollars) above the current 374.89 pesos (18.74 dollars).
“We have reached an agreement, a good agreement,” declared the president in her morning conference, since the increase had the support of all sectors: the Government, unions and businessmen.
The basic monthly salary is equivalent to 8,364 pesos (418.2 dollars) and on the border with the United States at 12,596 pesos (629.8 dollars)while the increase is more than three times what the Government estimates for inflation, which in the first half of November was 4.56%, said the head of state.
The announcement comes after a 110% increase in real terms in the minimum wage during the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from the same party as Sheinbaum, the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), seeking to end a stagnation of about three decades.
“As you know, throughout the neoliberal period, What they boasted about Mexico abroad was cheap labor, that speaks of the dehumanization of those governments”You can’t go out and boast starvation wages,” said the Mexican leader.
Some 8.5 million workers benefited
The salary increase will benefit 8.5 million workers, explained Marath Bolaños, Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare at the conference.
The official highlighted that the purchasing power of the minimum wage will have grown 135% since 2018so it will be enough for 1.85 basic baskets in 2025.
He also stated that of the 5.1 million people who escaped poverty between 2018 and 2022, 4.1 million did so thanks to increases in the minimum wage, which also reduced the gender wage gap by 29%.
Likewise, he pointed out that the real average salary of formal workers, registered in the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) It has grown a real 23.3% since 2018 to 580.5 pesos per day (29.02 dollars).
“We are also demolishing or fighting ideas that were previously quite entrenched about why not increase salaries because this meant a loss of employment or inflation,” he explained.
“Working spring”
The goal of the unions is to recover the purchasing power that the salary had in 1976, which would now be equivalent to 350 pesos (17.5 dollars) per day, said José Luis Carazo, spokesperson for the Labor Sector of the National Minimum Wages Commission (Conasami). .
Even so, The union leader maintained that Mexico has been experiencing a “labour spring” since the six-year term of López Obrador, when the reforms were approved to double minimum vacations, to guarantee that workers retire with their last salary, and to prohibit the externalization of workers, ‘outsourcing’.
“Today we have to recognize that, two months after assuming the Administration of this country (Sheinbaum), without a doubt, The signs are that this labor panorama spreads its wings to continue embracing workers and recover everything that we lost for a long time,” he said.
With information from EFE.
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