The unions, to the CEOE: “Either there is a salary agreement or this is going to hell”

2023-04-20 16:38:44

“Raise wages, lower prices, spread profits.” This will be the motto that will preside over the more than seventy demonstrations that will tour Spain from north to south on May 1, Labor Day. The unions come to their big day with salaries as the main claim and with a great threat to the CEOE: either there is a collective bargaining agreement that marks the salary increase for the next few years before the summer or this tool that has given such good results it is “buried forever” while there will be “an intense process of mobilization” that will increase and become general among the different sectors.

UGT and CC OO accused the employers of “irresponsible”, denounced that “they do not negotiate seriously” although there are informal contacts and warned them that either there is an agreement in the coming weeks “or this is going to hell”. “The CEOE has to know that it has days, weeks to be able to finalize a proposal that gives rise to an agreement based on the economic situation of our country,” the general secretary of CC OO, Unai Sordo, warned on Thursday at the conference. of the press to present a May 1 that, as they recognized, will be marked by the next general elections and in which they invited a “progressive” party to vote.

Sordo was emphatic that this negotiation cannot “extend indefinitely.” “Patience has run out. We are not going to continue stretching the gum of the negotiation any further. Either there is an agreement or there is no further negotiation,” he said.

The workers’ organizations do not have much hope that the CEOE can make a move in the ten days left until May 1 and finally make a counterproposal to its initiative for a 13.25% wage increase for the period 2022-2024 and a new design of the wage guarantee clause. For this reason, they will specify for May 1 what type of mobilizations they will carry out and, although they rule out that it is a general strike, they do warn that they will transcend the sectoral ones. Another threat that they repeated is that this “intense mobilization process is known how it starts, but not how it ends”; and they cited France and its massive protests against pension reform as an example.

«On May Day we risked the agreement. The CEOE has to feel the encouragement of the streets of our country demanding that they put an end to greed, with the usury that business profits represent, in some cases, “claimed Pepe Álvarez, general secretary of UGT.

The pending challenges

For Álvarez, May 1 must “consolidate the achievements of recent years, which are not recognized as they should be from a political point of view. This day has to be a clear and concise response to that recognition. Consolidate the labor reform from the political point of view and promote other important issues such as the price of dismissal or the right to decent housing, with more medium and long-term measures aimed at a public and social housing stock.

In addition, the UGT leader stressed that “there are problems that have to be addressed and that have to do with safety and health at work, with the lack of personnel in the Labor Inspectorate, with fair taxation, with the need to continue implementing social policies or preserving fundamental public services for citizens, such as health, education or justice.