Salary increase: How much? How and where?

Santo Domingo.- The National Wages Committee (CNS) is evaluating the new minimum wage for non-sectorized workers at the request of the President of the Republic, Luis Abinader.

Abinader assured that the government sector would not accept an increase of less than 20%. The trade union centers proposed an additional 10%, which would represent a total increase of 30%. Meanwhile, the business people have not presented their proposals to date.

But how much? How? and Where? Will it be the upside?

The first thing you should know is that there are currently 17 minimum wages, which include four groups or scales, precisely the ones that the head of state proposed to improve.

Large Companies: RD$ 24,990.00

Medium-sized companies: RD$ 22,908.00

Small Businesses: RD$15,351.00

Microenterprise: RD$14,161.00

These lines include the guards, who receive a salary of 20,527.00 pesos, and the camp worker, who receives RD$14,178 pesos.

What would be the new tentative minimum wage?

Large Companies: RD$29,988.00

Medium-sized companies: RD$27,490.00

Small Businesses: RD$18,421.20

Microenterprise: RD$16,993.20

Implementation

The increase in the minimum wage of the non-sectorized sector will be applied as long as two industries that make up the tripartite dialogue (employers, trade unionists, and government representatives) approve it.

“We are saying that (to the businessmen) so that they do not later say that they have been surprised in that matter. The correct thing is to get out of there with a unified proposal that is voted on by the whole,” said the President of the National Confederation of Trade Union Unity (CNUS), Rafael “Pepe” Abreu.

Abreu indicated that, during the meeting that the CNS held last Monday at the headquarters of the Ministry of Labor, the business people delivered a document stating that accumulated inflation is 6% and that the productivity of the Dominican worker has risen by 2%. Therefore, “reading between the lines” means that his proposal would be close to approximately 10% or 8%.

“The businessmen made a very well-founded document, theoretically, that is a treatise, wonderful to read, because they talk about all the issues. But they forgot one detail, and that was that the meeting was to present proposals for percentages, in response to the two that are up in the air (the 30 from the trade union centres and the 20 from the government),” explained the trade unionist.

The beneficiaries

At this stage, the salaries of workers in the non-sectorized private sector, private guards, and agricultural sector employees are being assessed. In the second stage, employees’ wages in free zones, hotels, bars, restaurants, and heavy machinery operators in the agricultural sector will be analyzed.

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It should be noted that, according to the Ministry of Economy, 19 salary increases were made in different sectors from August 2020 to April 2023. Specifically, in the non-sectorized private sector, from July 2021 to February 2024, the Dominican government implemented two increases in the minimum wage, impacting about 720,000 formal workers.