The deputies approve raising the salary by 3.5%

The Budget for 2023 that the Congress Board has approved this week includes the forecast of raising the salary of deputies by 3.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
01 October 2022 Saturday 13:32
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The deputies approve raising the salary by 3.5%

The Budget for 2023 that the Congress Board has approved this week includes the forecast of raising the salary of deputies by 3.5%. An increase in line with the one proposed by the Government for public employees that has been adopted with the support of the representatives of the PSOE and the deputy of United We Can, Gloria Elizo, while those of PP and Vox have voted against.

As reported by parliamentary sources, both the vice president four, Ignacio Gil Lázaro, of Vox, and the secretary four, Adolfo Suárez (PP), have argued that they could not support the Budget without knowing what exact percentage of the increase was going to be transferred to the staff of the Chamber, given that the Government continues to negotiate this point with the civil service unions.

The approved document includes the aforementioned increase forecast of 3.5% but, as usual, the final increase will be adapted to the percentage that ends up being agreed upon in that Treasury negotiation with the union centrals.

Neither the second vice president, the 'popular' Ana Pastor, on medical leave, nor the other two representatives of United We Can in the governing body have attended the meeting of the Congress Table: the first secretary, Gerardo Pisarello -who has opted to participate in a ceremony held at the same time in Congress in support of Lula da Silva's candidacy to be president of Brazil again - nor the fourth secretary, Javier Sánchez Serna.

Before the Table adopted this decision, both the Vox spokesman, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, and the deputy spokesman for Ciudadanos, Edmundo Bal, had advanced their rejection of a possible increase in the salary of deputies for 2023.

The Senate Board has also given its approval this Thursday to its Budget for next year, which has gone ahead with the support of the PSOE and the PNV and the rejection of the PP representatives in this body. The salary increase forecast for senators and the staff of that Chamber is also 3.5%.

Prior to the meetings held by the Tables of each Chamber, both institutions have held a joint meeting in Congress to approve the budget of the Cortes Generales, which includes common expenses and those of bodies dependent on Parliament such as the Ombudsman or the Central Electoral Board (JEC). In this case, PP and Vox have also voted against.

The salary increase that the deputies will enjoy was approved the same day that the Plenary Session of Congress rejected by 25 votes in favor, 265 against and 53 abstentions a non-law proposal (PNL) presented by the Esquerra Republicana that urged the Government, among other measures, to establish by law, from January 1, 2022, that salaries less than three times the Minimum Interprofessional Salary (SMI) rise with the CPI of each autonomous community.

Together with the increase in wages of less than three times the SMI, the PNL of Esquerra proposes creating a sufficient fund from the General State Budgets to finance, through current transfers to the competent administrations, the increase in the wages of all workers. of the public sector as a percentage equivalent to the interannual variation of the CPI of its autonomous community, with effect from January 1, 2023.

It is also committed to "adopting the necessary legislative initiatives to increase the Public Indicator of Multiple Income Effects (Iprem) up to the amount equivalent to the poverty threshold of each autonomous community, in order to guarantee sufficient and decent material conditions of existence for people who receive welfare benefits and other social policies linked to such an index”.

From the Socialist Group, María Inmaculada Oria called the NLP "opportunistic" because, as she explained, it raises issues that are the responsibility of social dialogue, such as the setting of wage increases in collective agreements. She recalled that the only salary set by the Government is the SMI.

Meanwhile, the PP parliamentarian Tomás Cabezón opposed the proposals of his party against the Executive that "gives in" to pro-independence and "populist" formations. In his opinion, "the great merit of the Government" is "passing" the workers and he warned that it has come this far because the Executive "refused to adopt measures in time" despite the requests of the PP.

For his part, the Vox deputy Juan José Aizcorbe defended that the workers "deserve" that measures be adopted to ensure "dignified and fair wages", although he warned that the proposal has important "legal limitations". However, he criticized the Government for not promoting measures such as the deflation of personal income tax and showed Vox's willingness to identify and correct budget items in which public money is "wasted".