The unions have made public this morning their proposal for a salary increase to resume talks with the CEOE to renew the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC). As La Vanguardia announced this Tuesday, a novel element is included, such as the fact that in the salary guarantee clauses, not only inflation is taken into account, which is the traditional position of the unions, but also the economic evolution of the companies , which is traditionally a position of the bosses.
Finally, in the last wording of its proposal, CC.OO. and UGT propose salary increases of 5% for 2022, 4.5% for this year and 3.75% for 2024. This is in line with what is foreseeable. What changes is the introduction of the criterion of the situation of the companies to determine part of the wage guarantee clauses.
Specifically, the unions state that if prices rise above the increase in wages, the review clauses will take into account both inflation and the evolution of companies. For this, an Economic Information System for Collective Bargaining (SIENC) will be developed so that, using it, it will be achieved that “the recovery of the economic power of wages has a relationship with the economic evolution of the sectors with reliable data” .
In addition, it is also indicated that the salary recovery clause will operate preferentially at the end of each of the years. In any case, it will be the collective agreements themselves that may establish other deadlines, such as the end of the 2022-24 cycle or a distribution of a recovery percentage at the end of the year and another at the end of the cycle.
What is not specified in the note made public by the unions is the percentage that inflation will weigh and the percentage that the situation of the companies will weigh in the salary guarantee clauses. The hypothesis with which they worked in recent days was 50% for each factor.
The presentation of the unions’ proposal was scheduled at a press conference this morning, but, as a result of the publication of some points of the proposal in La Vanguardia, the call was suspended. A joint statement from the two unions indicated that “given the leak that has occurred on the EENC proposal before we finalized in each and every one of the aspects, and therefore without closing”, the press conference was cancelled. . Finally, it has been replaced by a press release published at the end of this morning.
With this proposal, the unions recover the idea launched by the general secretary of the CC.OO., Unai Sordo, in January when for the first time he proposed including a condition related to the situation of the companies in the wage guarantee clauses. This is what has now been developed in this proposal.
These salary guarantee clauses were the stumbling block that the negotiations to renew the AECN ran into last May, which is the document that offers a reference for both company and sector agreements. Now they are trying to reconvert giving significant weight to the situation of companies.
