The CEOE rejects the proposal for a salary increase that the unions presented last week, but is preparing a counterproposal. In this way, a meeting between the two parties has already been set for next Monday, the 13th, which will reactivate the talks of the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) paralyzed since May of last year. The employers have discussed it this morning in a meeting of the Social Dialogue commission that was joined by representatives of territorial and sectoral organizations.
From the discussion held today in the CEOE it is concluded that there is a refusal to discuss a retroactive increase in salaries for the year 2022, that the increases proposed for 2023 and 2024 are considered excessive and that the review clauses proposed by the unions. They are clauses that, as a novelty, introduce a relationship with company profits, in addition to inflation.
The unions’ proposal, which La Vanguardia advanced, supposes a salary increase of 5% in 2022, 4.5% this year and 3.75% in 2024. The CEOE flatly rejects an increase in salaries from last year , with the argument that the companies have already closed the financial year and that, in societies where labor has a high weight, the impact would be excessive. In addition, employer sources also point out that they consider the 4.5% proposed for this year excessive, when agreements are being signed with much lower percentage increases.
They also add that they are not closed to a three-year approach, but that, in any case, it would be 2023-25, without retroactive increases that included last year.
Regarding the guarantee clauses, the CEOE is willing to explore linking wages with increases in the productivity of companies, but for the moment it does not accept the formula proposed by the unions of an index that allows establishing the situation of each sector and of each companies. “It is not intended that workers lose purchasing power,” employer sources point out, but add that formulas must be sought that do not cause second-round effects and that are acceptable to companies. In this sense, they recall that last year’s wage moderation has made it possible to avoid the feared second-round effects, the inflationary spiral that the Bank of Spain warned about on numerous occasions. One of the alternatives they propose is to calculate the increase in inflation at the end of the period of two or three years, and with formulas that are not automatic.
With the meeting on the 13th, the negotiations on salary increases paralyzed for months will be resumed, although with great unknowns as to whether it can really bear fruit given how distant the positions of employers and unions are.
The proposal made last week CC.OO. and UGT implied a salary increase of 13.25% in three years (2022-24) and with the novelty of salary guarantee clauses that took into account both inflation and company profits. “That the recovery of the purchasing power of wages has a relationship with the economic evolution of the sectors with reliable data”, the unions pointed out, proposing the creation of an index (SIENC) prepared with the data available to Social Security and the tax agency. They also set a deadline for the negotiation: it must be resolved before May Day.
