CCOO and UGT summon 1,500 trade unionists on June 9 to request a salary increase

MADRID, 3 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

CCOO and UGT have convened on June 9, in the Plaza de las Vistillas in Madrid, 1,500 trade unionists in charge of negotiating collective agreements in companies to achieve a salary increase of at least 3.5% for this year and the inclusion of the salary review clause that guarantees purchasing power.

The objective of the unions is to transfer to the negotiating tables the union demands that failed to agree with the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE) during the negotiation of the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC), which ended with a rupture of the conversations.

The union strategy that the general secretary of the CCOO, Unai Sordo, and that of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, will transfer will be to negotiate a salary increase of 3.5% for this year, 2.5% for 2023 and 2% for 2024, in addition to including salary review clauses in collective agreements.

With a CPI of 8.7% and underlying inflation close to 5%, according to May data released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the secretary general of the CCOO, Unai Sordo, said this week that "it's time to mobilize" to demand that the Government act in the face of "a wage problem" that will affect the "economic health of the country if there is no distribution of income through wages."

For the union leader, the CEOE's proposal to raise wages by 3.5%, without including the salary review clause demanded by the unions for the protection of purchasing power, is "very lame" in the current inflation scenario .

The unions have been warning for weeks that they will put pressure on collective bargaining to achieve their goals and anticipate mobilizations and greater conflict. At the same time, the representatives of the workers have asked the Government to "take action on the matter" and resort to tax and income policy and social benefits to balance the situation.

Along the same lines, UGT has warned that not raising wages with a level of inflation such as the current one is a "ballast" for the Spanish economy and for the purchasing power of workers and families.

The inflation situation is, for UGT, "very worrying", because the impact on the price of energy, food and metal raw materials from the war in Ukraine, is now added "the aggravation of the bottlenecks of the chain global supply", produced by the closure of many cities in China as a result of the 'zero Covid' policy imposed by its authorities.

Pepe Álvarez's union has denounced that the continuous increase in the cost of the shopping basket, together with the moderate wage growth (2.4% agreed in the agreements until April), "are restricting the purchasing power of households, which has a negative impact on the demand and growth of the Spanish economy".

"It is no longer enough to just wait for the temporary shock in energy prices to end. Given the situation, it is necessary to act to protect the purchasing power of working people, in order not to cause a serious economic contraction", holds UGT.