The spectacular increase in inflation throughout 2021 and 2022 has been a severe blow to the wages and living conditions of workers in Spain and internationally, further aggravated by European Union (EU)-NATO sanctions imposed on Russia amid the NATO war drive against Moscow.
Spain’s inflation accelerated well above expectations in February to its fastest pace in nearly 33 years. Consumer prices rose 7.4 percent in February from a year earlier driven by food, beverages, fuel and energy, mainly the price of electricity, which last week reached a new maximum of 442 per megawatt hour.
According to data from the Ministry of Labor published in February, wages established in collective bargaining agreements between employers and the trade unions in the first quarter of 2022 saw an average wage increase of only 2 percent, 0.5 percentage points above the December figure, but four points below the inflation registered in January (which was 6 percent, according to the National Institute of Statistics). This is based on the analysis of 1,554 collective bargaining agreements that cover 4.1 million workers.
Significantly, this is also below the minimum wage rise agreed between the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government and the trade unions for 2022: it will rise 3.6 percent, to 1,000 monthly. Celebrated as a progressive measure, the minimum wage increase in fact nonetheless remains below inflation. That is to say, workers’ real purchasing power will go down.
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