Colombia’s government decreed a 9.5% minimum wage hike after employers and labor unions failed to reach agreement.
The wage hike that will take force in January is significantly higher than the estimated inflation rate for 2024.
Monthly minimum wages will go up from COP1.3 million ($297) to 1.43 million ($326) next year.
The president celebrated the increased income for minimum wage workers and his government’s efforts in combating income inequality since taking office in 2022.
For the third time the minimum wage in Colombia has increased in real terms. In the three years that we have been working we have increased the minimum wage by 30 or 35% in real terms. We have to make a greater effort next year.
President Gustavo Petro
Fabio Arias, the president of labor union CUT, joined the government’s celebration and claimed it was “a way to go reducing the serious income gap that the neoliberal and pro-enterprise governments left us with before.”
The CUT and other labor unions sought a 12% wage hike from the employers, who wouldn’t go further than 6%.
The director of employers association ANDI, Bruce MacMaster, claimed that the wage hike decreed by the government “will probably have an important effect on inflation.”
According to Petro, “this is not true.”
The government has been delinking more than 200 public services and charges from the minimum wage in order to be able to decree wage hikes without also raising the cost of living.
