Foreign owners of Czech businesses will face more government pressure to raise wages, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said, highlighting a key campaign theme for fall elections.

Salaries in the richest ex-communist European Union member are still too low and represent a “serious problem” for the economy, the premier said after meeting with union leaders in Prague on Tuesday. Sobotka’s Social Democratic Party will seek further increases in the minimum wage so that it reaches at least 40 percent of the national average by 2018, he said during a televised news conference.

“Multinational corporations got used to Czechs working for significantly lower wages than their western counterparts, and they are taking advantage of it,” Sobotka said. “We must maintain permanent pressure on them to raise their salaries,” Bloomberg reports.

General elections in the country will be held in October 2017.