Yesterday’s celebration of May Day was marked by a direct threat from the majority unions, the UGT and CC.OO., towards the CEOE employer to increase salaries as part of collective bargaining. If this is not the case, they foresee strikes. In the mobilizations, there was hardly any criticism of the work of the central government, after having agreed on the labor reform, the pension reform or the increases in the SMI, in other words, all the attacks were focused on employers.
The lack of reprimands to the Executive – which sent four ministers to the demonstration in Madrid, one to Barcelona and another to Puertollano – set up an atypical May Day compared to what used to be usual. Minutes before heading the first banner that paraded along Gran Via in the Madrid capital, under the slogan “Raise wages, lower prices and distribute profits”, the leader of CC.OO, Unai Sordo, warned that “if not if an agreement is reached in a very short period of time, we will call mobilizations in all sectors in which the table of collective agreements is open and we will go on strike”. Next to him, the leader of the UGT, Pepe Ãlvarez, left on the roof of the employer the responsibility of closing the Fifth Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC), frozen since last year, and that it should be a guide on how much wages should be raised. “You know how the mobilizations start, but not how they end”, he assured, dropping the great conflict that has been unleashed in France against the policies of the Macron Government. “We want transparency, to know where the profits are going and to know who is taking them when they are ripe,” claimed Ãlvarez.
The supposed high business profits were also the protagonists of the main interventions of all the ministers. “It is essential to raise wages. The slogan is more appropriate than ever”, assured the Minister of Labor, Yolanda DÃaz. In his speech he explained that the average salary in Spain is 21,000 euros. “You cannot live with dignity on this salary, while the business profits are absolutely unbearable”, he lamented. The vice-president went one step further and pointed out the upcoming goals. “We want more free time to live with dignity and reduce the working day without reducing the salary”.
In the same vein, MarÃa Jesús Montero, Minister of Finance, emphasized the need to “socialize” the “record profits of some business sectors”. The Minister of Commerce, Alberto Garzón, also charged against employers and after describing their benefits as “abusive” asked for “a change of paradigm”. According to the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, “we cannot end the legislature with two pending issues as important for families and workers as limiting mortgages and food prices”.
In Barcelona Miquel Iceta, Minister of Culture, participated in the demonstration, while Isabel RodrÃguez, Minister of Territorial Policy, in Puertollano said that “we are at the end of a legislature in which progress has been made like never before in rights and in freedoms for workers”,
Unions also put duties on politicians. Unai Sordo asked to raise corporate tax if there is no agreement, and Ãlvarez reminded SMEs and the self-employed that they are also affected. “Large companies are part of the exploitation chain. It is the big corporations that keep the profit from the big contracts and cut so much from the SMEs that it is difficult for them to even pay their salaries”, pointed out Ãlvarez.
From Barcelona the tone was the same, with criticism of employers but not of the Spanish Government, apart from some comments on the “insufficient” housing law. Javier Pacheco (CC.OO) and Camil Ros (UGT) took the opportunity to point out that mobilization sometimes pays off, as in the agreements reached with the Government. “We need to share the wealth with the collective agreements”, said Pacheco. “This is a May Day in which it is demonstrated that class unionism works”, pointed out Ros.
