Colombia Vows New Wage Decree After Court Suspends Pay Rise
The standoff reached a flashpoint as the government reconvened the Permanent Commission on Wage and Labor Policy, signaling it had no intention of surrendering ground despite the judiciary's intervention.
The crisis stems from a ruling by the Council of State that froze a 23.7% minimum wage increase — one of the largest in recent Colombian history — originally enacted by President Gustavo Petro via decree in December. The court's suspension left vast numbers of workers in legal uncertainty, but Labor Minister Antonio Sanguino moved quickly to draw a hard line.
"We will defend to the utmost the right of workers to a living wage," Sanguino said following a negotiating session.
"The government will comply with the court's order by issuing a new transitional decree, but we are not ruling out maintaining or even exceeding the original figure," he added.
The Council of State framed its intervention as a precautionary measure, citing procedural vulnerabilities in the original decree — specifically, questions over whether the government bypassed technical obligations under Law 278 of 1996, which requires wage adjustments to be weighed against prevailing inflation and national productivity metrics. The court also raised concerns that an increase of this magnitude could push businesses toward the informal economy to sidestep surging labor costs.
In an unexpected development, major business groups — traditionally among the fiercest critics of large wage hikes — have broken ranks against the suspension. Bruce Mac Master, president of the National Association of Colombian Businessmen (ANDI), who originally cautioned that a double-digit increase would damage the economy, warned Monday that unwinding the raise now would prove far more disruptive.
"We decided not to sue (over) the decree because we recognize that rights have already been generated for workers since Jan. 1," he said.
Mac Master cautioned that reversing the 23.7% hike at this stage would trigger "unmanageable instability," with employers already having recalibrated payrolls operating under the new rate for more than six weeks.
President Petro, speaking in a nationally televised address Sunday night, forcefully rejected assertions that the wage increase had stoked inflation, attributing rising prices instead to meat export dynamics. Casting the judicial freeze as an institutional assault on working-class Colombians, Petro issued a rallying call for mass street protests.
"The vital wage will remain in place until the new decree is issued," he said. "We will see each other in every public square this Thursday, Feb. 19, at 4 p.m. to defend this historic achievement."
The government has eight days to publish the transitional decree before the legal window closes.
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