The Minimum Wage Will Cease to Exist in Javier Milei’s Argentina
Argentine President Javier Milei. X/ @extraprensa6
December 27, 2024 Hour: 10:05 am
Over the last year, the wage has experienced a deterioration in real terms as the purchasing power in pesos fell by 17.8%.
On Thursday, Argentine President Javier Milei set a new mandatory minimum wage with a 9.3 percent increase (US$17) that will be spread out in four staggered increases until next year.
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As of December 1, the current minimum living wage (SMVM) is 279,718 pesos (US$279). It will rise to 286,711 pesos (US$286) in January, then to 292,446 pesos (US$292) in February, and finally to 296,832 pesos (US$296) in March.
The Milei administration made that decision because employers and workers could not agree on the amount of the increase at the meetings of the National Council of Employment, Productivity, and Minimum Living Wage.
The increase in the amount of the nominal wage, however, will not improve the living conditions of workers. In the last year, the minimum living wage has experienced a deterioration in real terms as the purchasing power in pesos fell by 17.8%, according to Luis Campos, the researcher at the Institute of Studies and Training of the Argentine Workers’ Central-Autonomous.
The outlook for the well-being of the Argentine population could even worsen in the future. Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni anticipated that the existence of the minimum wage is a “conceptual error” that must be corrected at some point.
“Having a minimum wage is a mistake because if there are people who are willing to work for less than that wage, the scheme does not allow you to hire them because effectively you could not pay them an amount less than the minimum wage,” he said.
“Let’s hope that when Argentina is completely normal, conceptually, the mobile minimum living wage will cease to exist,” Adorni said, reproducing the economic policy logic of the far-right libertarian President Milei, for whom everything that involves public regulation is “a conceptual error.”
teleSUR/ JF Source: EFE
