The general secretary of the Workers’ Commissions (CC.OO.), Unai Sordo, yesterday ruled out any possibility of reaching the income pact that the Government now wants to promote before autumn, much less that officials be included in it, as he has claimed the employer.
Sordo, who appeared before the press at the CC.OO. to present the mobilization campaign with which the union is going to take up the claims of the public sector, he explained that it makes no sense to include either civil servants or pensioners in that income pact. In the case of civil servants, because “the same level of salary increase cannot be demanded from private companies that have exorbitant profits in the electricity or financial sector than from a government that has a public budget with which it manages common public services” he justified.
In fact, CC.OO. has convened this Thursday a rally before the Congress of Deputies to demand that the Government resume salary negotiations for the 3.3 million state public employees. They are demanding wage increases, but they are willing to lower their demands, according to the coordinator of the CC.OO. Public Area, Humberto Beltrán, if in return they obtain other types of labor improvements such as the general 35-hour day, the elimination of of replacement, or a greater investment in digital updating and training, among other issues.
For his part, the general secretary of CC.OO. He warned about the intention of “using public revenues as an example of salary devaluation, as is being requested from part of the published opinion and from economic instances” and demanded that “the Government does not make eyes at those logics”.
Regarding pensions, Unai Sordo warned the Government that as the end of the year approaches, the pressure to prevent updating them based on the CPI will intensify, but he recalled that this right has been collected and sealed in a law approved in the Congress.
Sordo assured that the only way for the income pact to advance is for the Government to get involved in it and put elements of negotiation on the table. Something that did not happen last week or in the regular telephone contacts that are being held these days. “The Government has to understand that a good part of the success or failure of the income agreement depends on the Government, it must be part of it. The great unknown is what is on the table”, recognized the CCOO leader.
Both Commissions and UGT are inclined that one of those elements of negotiation be an increase in corporate tax as well as an advance of the rise in the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI).
Now all eyes are on today’s intervention by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in the debate on the state of the nation, in which he is expected to point out some of these new proposals.
