Colombia’s State Council provisionally suspended a 23.7% minimum wage hike that was decreed by President Gustavo Petro to secure a living wage for minimum wage workers in December.
The country’s top administrative court additionally gave the Petro administration a week to issue a new “transitional” decree that will be valid until the Council of State permanently rules on legal challenges of the minimum wage hike.
In the meantime, employers can maintain the minimum wage set by the government in December of 2024, according to the court.
In a post on social media platform X, the president said that last year’s annual decree was in line with the Constitution and administrative regulations.
Petro has long claimed that the constitution orders a living wage for minimum wage workers, suggesting that lower wages set by previous governments were in fact in violation of the constitution.
The president said that he would meet with social organizations to determine a response to the decision.
Labor Minister Antonio Sanguino told radio station Blu that the State Council failed to notify the government of its decision and called on people to massively sue the administrative court in defense of their income.
Sanguino stressed that preliminary economic indicators suggest that the minimum wage hike had little to no impact in inflation or the health of the economy in general.
“What the Council of State is doing in inhumane,” stressed the minister.
The country’s largest labor union, the CUT, rejected the State Council’s decision, calling the ruling “the biggest social injustice that could be committed in Colombia.”
The labor union asked the government to maintain the minimum wage hike in the transitional decree and suggested that it would be calling for protests in defense of workers rights.
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