The first meeting, still without progress, comes after seven months of blockade and after Garamendi won election in the CEOE
First contact between the CEOE employers and the CCOO and UGT trade union organizations to address one of the cornerstones that define the labor market in Spain: collective bargaining, that is, in practice, the guidelines for determining the pay raise. Seven months have passed since the employers pulled out of these talks, which were never well advanced.
In the course of that time, elections have been brokered, that of the CEOE presidency, which took place last November and after which Antonio Garamendi was re-elected president of the employers’ association. That has been a turning point for the new year, according to sources close to the negotiations.
Once that electoral nomination was over, the unblocking was reflected this Thursday in a meeting that was the first of a formal nature held by social agents after a continued overrun of warnings from both parties in the form of protests and calls for common sense and the responsibility of the government in general and of the Secretary of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, in particular. Although at this point there have been specific contacts to try and unlock the positions. Senior representatives from the organizations participated in the meeting this Thursday: Rosa Santos, Director of Labor Relations at the CEOE; Mari Cruz Vicente, CCOO Labor Action Secretary; and Fernando Luján, UGT’s assistant general secretary for trade union policy.
de-escalate the conflict
All parties agree that “no progress has been made” on the initial positions, according to sources consulted by this newspaper. In fact, it was a meeting “without an agenda” and from which no major rapprochement could be expected. Although at the same time these sources clarify that the agents of the social dialogue have shown their willingness “to meet again”, despite the fact that they have not set a specific calendar. And they admit that a hypothetical progress would ease relations at a general level and lessen the conflict that may arise in the future.
What both sides remain unchanging are the positions that led to the failure of the negotiations in May last year. On the one hand, the possibility demanded by the trade unions to include wage revision clauses linked to the evolution of the CPI. In other words, that the agreements made include the automatic activation of this link to inflation, so that wage increases are always in line with price increases. The CEOE maintains its firm denial of this possibility, as each company’s or industry’s situation is different and generalizations of this kind cannot be made. On the other hand, there is no approximation as to the percentage that collective bargaining can yield to raise wages.
There was little hope for employers and unions to resume contact to make progress on the V-Agreement for Collective Bargaining (AENC), stalled since late 2021. The demands of the UGT and CCOO to tackle a wage increase to in the midst of the escalation of inflation, all ties between the two parties broke.
Now the aim is to soften the positions in order to reach an agreement, although it still does not seem easy. Especially now that the government is about to announce when it will try to raise the inter-professional minimum wage, one of the most thorny issues Labor faces even without the consensus of social dialogue.
During these months, numerous wage agreements were signed at sectoral level or in companies. According to the Department of Labor, the average salary increase negotiated during the year was nearly 2.8%. This is the largest wage increase since 2008, in the midst of the economic bubble preceding the previous financial recession. However, the loss of purchasing power was the largest in decades, as inflation was much higher at 8.4%.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
