2023-05-05 18:51:18
Never before in the last four years has a social dialogue agreement been as secretive as that of collective bargaining to raise wages that the CC OO and UGT unions are about to reach with the CEOE employers. Nor had the negotiations ever before been marred by the criticism that the Government had launched against the employers. It did not happen with the complex labor reform (at the end of 2021), that of pensions (in the summer of that same) or the increases in the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) of the entire legislature.
It was exactly on May 5, 2022, when inflation was going through one of its worst moments, when the union leaders, Unai Sordo and Pepe Álvarez, considered the negotiations with the president of the employers, Antonio Garamendi, to reach an agreement broken. of income to which the Government called to agree since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Then, the differences were “insurmountable”, as they admitted. After the summer, with prices rising almost 11% in the middle of August and the Bank of Spain’s recommendation to contain wages, there did not seem to be any signs of approximation either. Much less with the CEOE elections just around the corner. When Garamendi faced that appointment in November to revalidate himself at the head of the businessmen’s organization, contacts began to be resumed.
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But only from the inside out. Because the conflict – at least public – was notorious between businessmen and unions. Actually, they had already sat down to negotiate. In a very stealthy way. Only at certain times at the beginning of the year did the social agents confirm the first contacts.
The talks between both parties have had such a point of discretion that they have advanced in parallel to the attacks launched by the Executive against the employers. One of the most shocking was that of the Prime Minister himself, Pedro Sánchez, who went so far as to accuse the businessmen of “gentlemen with cigars” who were trying to curtail the government’s action. He did it in July, in one of the plenary sessions in which he presented his package of anti-crisis measures, with the new tax on banks and energy companies on the table in Congress.
Also, the Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, has shown her criticism of the employer’s position for not agreeing to negotiate the V Agreement for Collective Bargaining (AENC) while increasing the benefits of the companies. The general secretary of Podemos described the president of Mercadona, Juan Roig, as a “ruthless capitalist”, once again raising the anger of the employers against Moncloa. Even the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, accused the businessmen of “stuffing” and “fatten the benefits at the expense of the wages and effort of the workers.”
To further tarnish government-business relations, Ferrovial’s decision to move its headquarters from Madrid to Amsterdam further eroded the ties between the two parties. Pedro Sánchez and the economic vice president, Nadia Calviño, attacked the president of the construction company, Rafael del Pino. Garamendi, for his part, regretted this position and warned that “they are going to scare away investors.” “They have gone too far,” he came to affirm.
With May Day in the offing, and the unions demanding an agreement or they would take to the streets in the fall, the positions were already very close. But nobody expected that the principle of agreement would arrive just 72 hours after those concentrations.
In the absence of the final signature, that of the AENC will be the last great labor pact of the legislature. One of the most sneaky due to the opacity in the negotiations. It joins that of the labor reform, which was about to end up annulled by a vote ‘in extremis’ in Congress that ended up saving by mistake the deputy of the PP Alberto Casero. And those of the increases in the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI), initially supported by the employer, although not in the last two revaluations.
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