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The Polish government has agreed to raise the monthly minimum wage in Poland from zł.1,386 to zł.1,500 at the start of 2012. The move comes after several years of discussions and negotiations among workers’ unions, business owners and the government.

After taxes and deductions, the net minimum wage will amount to zł.1,100 per month.

PKPP Lewiatan, a group which represents Polish business owners, released a statement saying the move to increase wages will simply discourage firms from hiring new employees.

Moreover, the group believes that net wage increases should not come from business owners, but rather from the lowering of taxes and from a reduction in bureaucracy. Any increase in remuneration should be the result of increased productivity, they say.

Although the government’s decision was welcomed by trade unions, particularly by Solidarity, representatives have said more needs to be done to help workers on low wages. Piotr Duda, a representative of NSZZ “Solidarity,” said that the latest wage increase does not sufficiently address the problems facing low-paid workers.

“There is nothing worse, or more degrading for a worker than the inability to support oneself and one’s family despite working hard and fairly for an entire month’s worth of work,” he said.

His comments were made before the Sejm, the lower house of Poland’s parliament, where Solidarity outlined its latest initiative for further increases to the minimum wage.

The initiative, signed by 350,000 Polish workers, seeks to amend the constitution so that the minimum wage would automatically be increased if GDP were to grow by more than 3 percent. If it grows by less than that amount, minimum wage increases would need to be negotiated with the Trilateral Commission (consisting of representatives from the business community, labor organizations and the government), as they are today.