Prime Minister Zoran Zaev announces: Growth of minimum wage

This year, the minimum wage will increase. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev told the news, but did not release any details. Unofficially, a proposal by the Economic and Social Council is that the minimum wage is to be adjusted in accordance with the GDP growth, the increase in average wage and the increase in the consumer basket. What remains problematic with this proposal is that in that case, it would be done with the scaled salary adjustments.
Prime Minister Zaev just added the information:
“We finalized the year with an average salary of more than 24 thousand denars, or 400 euros. I can announce that we will additionally make a decision to increase the minimum wage because with its increase the spiral of growth in the average salary that lasted until September began, and we saw that it continued to do so,” Zaev said, and when asked when this decision would be made and how big will be the minimum wage, he stated that this is just an announcement.
In December of last year, organized by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a tripartite meeting was held, attended by representatives of the ILO, the Federation of Trade Unions and the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, dedicated to the minimum wage.
Then it was said that with the minimum wage of 12.165,00 denars in November 2018, only 37.38% of the costs calculated in the minimum trade union basket are covered, which for November 2018 is 32.545,00 denars, and if the employee is paid average state salary in September 2018 (September is the last data from the SSO) in the amount of 24.355,00 denars, with which it can settle 74.96 percent of the most necessary needs of their four-member family (32.492,69 denars). In order to ensure the total value of the products and services included in the calculation of the basket, it lacks 33.41% of the average salary – ie a nominal amount of 8.137,00 denars.
“The data show that there is a justified need to increase the minimum wage, and the Federation of Trade Unions of Macedonia in the next period will offer a model as it is justified to grow within frames that will be in the interest of the workers and will not cause major financial implications for the employers, said the Federation of Trade Unions.