Hundreds of thousands of workers are pending collective bargaining this year after the hardest part of the CPI rise is behind us. The department stores – which affects 230,000 people throughout Spain – starts this week and will mark the rise in wages for massive sectors in employment. But there are others with great affectation of employees that continue without seeing the light despite the fact that last year they already began to negotiate. Perhaps the most symbolic is the offices and offices of Catalonia, on which some 120,000 people depend.
The unions have marked in red the conversations that will begin this Friday with the employers of large surfaces Anged, which includes companies such as El Corte Inglés (80,000 employees), Alcampo, Carrefour, Ikea or Leroy Merlin. The representatives of the workers propose a “historic” salary increase, they emphasize, to adjust salaries to the cost of living. Specifically, Fetico or CC.OO. They will put on the negotiation table a minimum increase of 18% in 4 years and a review clause for deviation from the CPI, guaranteeing 18,000 euros as a reference base salary in 2024.
Another of the points that the negotiation will concentrate on is the reduction of public holidays to work, in addition to the limitation of part-time, setting a minimum of 28 hours in part-time contracts.
In Catalonia, the agreement for the agricultural sector and that for sports facilities are also “stuck”, UGT sources explain. From CC.OO. They point out that agriculture affects 25,000 people and sports facilities affect 17,000. Those that started this important year are the Girona trade, with 65,000 workers, the metal trade in Girona (35,000 employees) and the fruit and vegetable trade in Lleida (15,000).
In the case of offices and offices in Catalonia, the point of disagreement lies in whether the increases are compensable if the worker has a supplement outside the agreement. In that case, the salary increase could be annulled if the employer wants. The proposed salary increase agreement is 4% for 2022 and 3.5% for this year, they said from CC.OO. The request they make is that 50% of the increase cannot be absorbed in salaries that charge supplements above the agreement. The employer does not accept it for now.