ΓΣΕΒΕΕ
- 30 Apr 2023
- economy
The minimum wage must be increased by 8% to 10% and since it will mainly affect small and very small businesses for which, despite the improvement recorded in the economic climate surveys, they continue to face liquidity and over-indebtedness problems, it is deemed necessary measures should be taken to deal with the additional costs, such as the complete abolition of the pretension fee.
This is noted in the conclusions of the report of the Institute of Small and Medium Enterprises of GSEVEE "on the evaluation of the current statutory minimum wage and daily wage with estimates for its adaptation to the current economic conditions" that it sent to the Mediation and Arbitration Organization, in the context of a related consultation.
The conclusions of the report highlight that the simultaneous increase of the minimum wage combined with the compensation of the increase in business costs from this increase can be an effective mix of economic policy to combat stagnant inflation. In particular, compensating business costs will ensure that we do not have an additional increase in inflation, while maintaining the purchasing power of workers will stimulate consumption by acting as an anti-recessionary measure.
In addition, the amount of inflation recorded by ELSTAT for January 2023 should be taken into account.
Effects of minimum wage change
In the chapter of the report on the effects of the minimum wage, it is stated that, based on data provided by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and drawn from the annual personnel tables registered in ERGANI, it appears that a change in the minimum wage will affect 585,601 employees or 24.7% of all employees.
As can be seen from the data, the number of workers paid on the basis of the minimum wage in 2022 has decreased compared to 2021 by 9.4% and this despite the overall increase of 9.5% implemented in 2022.
The average monthly salary of employees who were paid on the basis of the minimum wage in 2022 after processing the data by IME GSEVEE amounts to 583.3 euros and includes both full-time and part-time/shift workers. In fact, compared to 2021, it shows an increase of 17.3%, which is due to the increase in full-time employees.
