The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, yesterday mounted a strong defense of his decree from December of last year approving a 23.7% increase in the minimum wage for 2026, which was provisionally suspended last week by the Council of State. As the country follows the legal process that will determine whether the measure — considered historic by the Government — will stand, the president not only reaffirmed his position but also issued an explicit call for popular mobilization this Thursday, Feb. 19, in public squares in several Colombian cities, in what he described as the defense of the “vital minimum wage.”
In a political climate marked by sharp contrasts among institutions, productive sectors, and social forces, Petro built his remarks around the idea that, beyond the legal debate, the dignity of millions of workers is at stake. “The vital wage will remain in place until the new decree is issued,” the president said, stressing that the effects of the increase will not be lost while work proceeds on a temporary administrative act ordered by the court itself.
Tensions also extend within the tripartite dialogue among unions, business associations, and the government, a negotiating table that Petro called to reconvene, to find common ground to support the wage adjustment without additional tensions.
Minimum wage increase in Colombia: Petro called for mobilization
From the opening minutes of his speech, the president structured his defense of the decree based on a legal interpretation of Colombia’s constitutional mandate, particularly the Constitutional Court ruling C-815 of 1999.
According to Petro, that ruling requires that the minimum wage take into account not only classic economic variables such as inflation or productivity but — “with prevailing character” — also the constitutional protection of labor and the need to ensure a minimum vital and mobile wage.
This, he said, explains and justifies why his Government has pushed for such a substantial increase in a context where traditional formulas would have yielded much lower figures.
The Colombian president reiterated that critics who warn of technical overreach and risks of inflation or unemployment are mistaken, and asserted that recent data contradict those warnings.
“Even with 6.4% inflation as forecast by the Central Bank, wage growth would be the largest in history and would mark a shift toward greater national production and, through this channel, greater wealth and increased productivity,” he wrote on his X social media account.
Petro concluded that “it would be a national stupidity to lower the vital wage. We will listen to the country’s major business leaders,” alluding to the growing consensus — also among business associations and opposition political sectors — around respecting the decision to maintain the 23.7% increase for this year.
Dato importante: aún con una inflación del 6.4% como pronostica el Banrepública, el crecimiento de los salarios sería el más grande la historia y marcaría un cambio hacia mayor producción nacional y, por esta vía, mayor riqueza y aumento de la productividad.
Sería una estupidez… https://t.co/9HA4PTWisj
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) February 16, 2026
In his reading, the application of the concept of a “living wage,” based on the constitutional protection of workers and the family basket calculated by DANE, does not violate the legal framework but rather complies with it, and constitutes an activist yet legitimate reinterpretation of the state’s obligations toward the labor force.
This line of legal defense frames the controversy not only as an economic debate but as a dispute over the terms under which social justice is understood within Colombia’s Constitution.
Mobilization, coordination, and the standoff with productive sectors
Beyond the technical and constitutional arguments, the president elevated the defense of the minimum wage to a political and social level with his call to citizens.
“We’ll see each other in all public squares across Colombia this Thursday, Feb. 19,” he wrote on his X account, inviting workers, supporters, and members of social movements to demonstrate in favor of what he described as a historic social achievement.
This call comes amid a climate of growing polarization, where left-wing sectors describe the suspension of the increase as an “institutional blockade,” while economic and business forces insist that the wage-setting mechanism must strictly adhere to traditional technical criteria such as inflation, productivity, and economic growth.
The negotiation table that Petro promoted also appears in his account as part of the solution: He not only called for dialogue between unions and business leaders but also urged them to resume the understanding that was not reached at the close of 2025. The idea is that, jointly, they can define criteria and arguments that reinforce the new temporary decree the government must issue in the coming days.
For the president, this dialogue will not only provide technical legitimacy to the adjustment but will also help defuse tensions that could escalate both in the socio-economic and political arenas.