A proposed increase in Portugal's minimum wage, frozen for the past three years, will be decided in September.
The national minimum wage is planned to increase to €500pcm and if the legislation is passed the increase will apply immediately.
The proposed increase has been the subject of a campaign by employers and workers unions which have been seeking an increase in a basic wage which has declined in real terms by at least 4.7% in the past three years.
In late May after the European elections the Minister of Social Security ordered a meeting of the Concertação Social to open negotiations on the subject.
Mota Soares was fulfilling a promise to the unions to negotiate a wage increase only after the European elections, so as to remove the topic from election campaigns, and only after the departure of the Troika at the end of the bailout programme. Both conditions now have been met, the groundwork has been done and the proposal should go through later this month.
But despite the surprise level of agreement between the Government, employers and trade unions, the fine detail of the legislation is far from agreed.
The unions want the minimum wage to rise to €515 from the current €485 pcm, employers do not and the Confederation of Trade and Industry complains that "only with counter agreements" will it accept an increase of this amount.
One of the problems is that the government wants to link a rise in the minimum wage to an increase in workers' productivity. There are doubts about the constitutionality of this model and the government could do without another of its initiatives being knocked back by the Constitutional Court.
Portugal’s constitution requires the state to establish and update a national minimum wage by taking into account the needs of workers, the rising cost of living, the level of economic development, the requirement for economic stability and the accumulation of central funds for economic development.
With a high level of aceptance from bodies normally in conflict a September rise is looking like a distinct probablity and will bring some small relief to those at the bottom of the earning's chart. Next year is an election year and the current government is keen on a rise in low paid workers' wages.
