Nearly 150 Nestlé workers in Girona gathered this Friday in front of the multinational’s factory in the city to demand that the collective agreement, which expired in March, be unblocked.
The main demand of the staff is that salaries increase each year in accordance with the real increase in the CPI, recovering the clause that existed in the previous agreement.
“The company does not want to continue negotiating the rest of the measures of the agreement until we renounce this salary increase linked to the CPI,” explains the president of the Nestlé works council in Girona and spokesman for the negotiating table of the collective agreement, Lluís Parra, who criticizes that “it would mean losing purchasing power.”
The union sections of CCOO and UGT have called on the Nestlé Girona staff, this Friday at nine in the morning, to a rally in front of the factory that the multinational has in the city. They did so just before a meeting with the company in which the new collective agreement was negotiated, after the old one expired in March.
The negotiation has been ongoing for ten months, mainly due to an issue on which the company and the unions cannot agree: the salary increase. “The company offers us a point of increase in CPI, but we want to maintain the salary conditions that we have now,” said the president of the Nestlé works council in Girona and spokesman for the negotiating table of the collective agreement, Lluís Parra, who He is convinced that if the salary does not increase as the CPI does, for the workforce “it would mean losing purchasing power.”
Parra recalled that the working conditions included in the collective agreement they had until now, which expired in March, “cost them a strike in 2019.” “We fought a lot to get the entire CPI reflected in our salary and now we don’t want to let it be lost,” says the president of the Nestlé works council in Girona.
Regarding the possibility of reaching an imminent agreement with the multinational, Parra admits that he sees it as “complicated.” “It is a bit green because in the last meetings we have found that the company is only determined that if we do not eliminate this clause from the CPI, it does not want to continue talking about the rest of the measures,” says Parra, who says that they made “a conciliation in Labor Inspection in case the administration could help us unclog the situation, but it was not fruitful.”
For his part, the general secretary of CCOO Spain and union delegate in Girona, Pablo Esteban, states that the union he represents does not understand that the company “only wants to move forward once the issue of the salary increase is closed.” “We want to negotiate and we insist that by listening, people understand each other,” adds Esteban, who criticizes that Nestlé “does not listen.”
The Nestlé workforce also asks to include in the new agreement other measures that it considers “social” such as modifying the working day. “What we want is a concretion of time; for workers to come to the factory less, earning the same because we train that large companies pull this way; for people to be better off and be more productive,” details the general secretary of CCOO Spain and union delegate in Gerona.
In Girona, this collective agreement that is being negotiated affects 850 workers in the city’s industry. The staff of Nestlé’s factories in La Penilla (Cantabria), Pontecesures (Galicia), Sevares and Gijón (Asturias) also participate in the negotiation from their headquarters.
