The unions reach out to the employers at their headquarters to reach an agreement to increase wages
After
seven months without dialogue
on the renewal of the
Agreement for Collective Bargaining and Employment (AENC),
which will mark the generic recommendation on salary increases for workers in Spain, employers and unions have ended the thaw and
have resumed the dialogue this Thursday in a face-to-face meeting at the CEOE headquarters
, as EL MUNDO has learned.
"There has not been much progress,
but it was a necessary meeting,"
sources present at the meeting have told this newspaper.
Since the beginning of the year, both parties had staged a
rapprochement
and informal talks had resumed, until today the change in attitude has crystallized in
a first meeting.
Although there were doubts about the place of the meeting, the unions finally agreed to go to the CEOE headquarters at 12 this Thursday.
The meeting lasted
two hours
and
no roles were exchanged
, but a first contact was necessary to start the dialogue again and try to channel an agreement that interests both the
unions
- who have been demanding it for a long time - and the
employers
' association -who now feels more comfortable negotiating than in June, when inflation exceeded 10%-.
Not only have there been no documents at the meeting, but
there has also been no discussion of figures,
and that the main objective is to mark a
generic recommendation
(for all sectors of the country) on the path of salary increases that should be agreed upon in the agreements groups for a few years, predictably
2022, 2023 and 2024.
The increase in the first year would be applied in tables, that is, the 2022 salary would be fictitiously raised and the 2023 increase would be applied to that amount.
The great stumbling block of this negotiation, which blew up the dialogue before the heavy summer, is the
inclusion of salary review clauses
in the agreements in accordance with
inflation
- which forces salaries to be reviewed and workers compensated if they have suffered a loss of purchasing power based on the difference between the salary increase and the final increase in the CPI-.
The CEOE has refused from the outset to accept them
, while
for the UGT and CCOO they are essential
, although they agree to apply them with many nuances or in different ways.
Despite the employer's refusal, in practice
the agreements that were closed
last year include this type of clause to a much greater extent -which have gone from being present in
17%
of all agreements to being present in
around half -
, which is why employers now seem less reluctant to negotiate on them, also given that inflation has eased to 5.7% in December.
The fact that
economic developments have not worsened as expected
a few months ago and that Spain has avoided recession may also help businessmen to have more confidence about the future of their business.
The social agents have left today's meeting
without a new date to continue with the dialogue
, to which they should already go with
concrete proposals in writing
.
It is foreseeable, however, that
next week they will face each other again
if the advances that the
Ministry of Social Security
is making on the political level for the
second pension reform continue to improve,
and if the Ministry of Labor brings them together to notify you of the next increase in the
Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI)
, which should come into force before companies have to pay their January payrolls.
Initially
, the CEOE had broken the dialogue with the Ministry of Yolanda Díaz,
as a result of her agreement with Bildu to reinforce the role of the Inspection in the collective agreements, but the truth is that in this also
the employers have softened their position
and , as confirmed by Miguel Garrido, its first vice president, in an interview with this medium, if they are summoned by the Ministry,
they will attend the appointment.
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