Minimum wage rise with long-term effect agreed
Ljubljana, 17 December - Pushed by the Left, an opposition party that made raising the minimum wage a condition for its support for the minority government, parliament agreed in December to raise the minimum wage from EUR 638 net to EUR 667 next year and to EUR 700 in 2020.
Ljubljana
The poster for a 2015 unionist campaign demanding higher minimum wage.
Photo: Tamino Petelinšek/STA
The new bill also comes with a provision that will maintain the value of the minimum wage in the long term. In 2021, a formula is to be introduced to keep the minimum wage at least 20% but not more than 40% above the minimal costs of living. Currently, this would mean EUR 736.
The changes, coming after basic welfare allowance went up from EUR 297 to EUR 393 earlier in the year, heard some criticism from the opposition Democrats (SDS) and New Slovenia (NSi), and in particularly from employers. They argued the motion had been adopted without social dialogue, could hurt employment and undermined the "predictable business environment" tenet.
Nodding to arguments that the Left's motion in its entirety presented too swift of a rise, the coalition added the 40% ceiling to the 2021 formula, while additionally softening the original proposal, which would immediately exclude individual bonuses and allowances from the minimum wage. The bonuses are to be scrapped from the minimum wage in 2020.
The Left's Luka Mesec hailed the changes, saying they were "a legislative guarantee that nobody who has a job will fall into poverty" and pointing out that only a decade ago the minimum wage had been at EUR 450, EUR 100 under the poverty threshold at the time.