Santander (EFE).- The management and the works council of Aspla Plásticos Españoles have failed again in the negotiation of the agreement, despite the fact that the union part has renounced part of its demand to try to reach an agreement that ends to the indefinite strike at the Torrelavega plant, which began on January 29.
The disagreement continues to be the salary review to the real CPI retroactively to the date the agreement expired (March 2022), as well as the company’s new claim to extend the ultraactivity for six months in exchange for withdrawing three lawsuits that are pending. resolve, something that the committee dismisses as “blackmail.”
The committee has accepted the validity of four years for the agreement, as proposed by the company, and that the reduction in working hours be four hours in the third year of validity and another four in the fourth up to 1,752 hours per year, as well as deferring until the fourth year the rest of social and labor demands.
For its part, the company offers a salary increase for the second year of the agreement that would go from 2.5% to 2.7%, something that the committee continues to consider “insufficient”.
The committee warns that “it will not give in to blackmail”
After the failure of the negotiation, the committee of the company Aspla Plásticos Españoles has warned the management, during a demonstration in Torrelavega, that it is willing to negotiate a solution to the strike that lasts 17 days, but “not to give in to blackmail” and neither to take advantage of the conflict “to take away social, labor and salary rights” from workers.
“We are responsible, but Aspla has to be clear that we are not going to give up or allow ourselves to be imposed conditions of treatment and wages that are not decent,” said a spokesman for the committee at the end of the demonstration held this afternoon in Torrelavega, in which more than 3,000 people have participated.
The mobilization, which has taken place between Torrelavega and the factory, has been headed by a banner with the motto: “For a dignified agreement and for the improvement of labor treatment in Aspla”, and has had representatives of the local and regional politics of almost all parties, including the mayor, Javier López Estrada (PRC), and the president of Parliament, Joaquín Gómez (PSOE).
The tour through several streets of Torrelavega has served for the protesters to chant slogans such as “this direction our ruin” or “700 families almost a month without salary for a fair agreement.”
And, in reading the manifesto, the spokesman for the committee has denounced “the lies and slander” that the Aspla management “in a remote-controlled and interested manner” has transferred in recent days, in addition to accusing the management of “coercion” and of “arrogance”.
Aspla accuses the committee of “irresponsibility”
For its part, the company, in a statement after concluding the protest, has shown itself to be “disappointed” at what it calls the committee’s “irresponsibility” in “extending the strike situation”, in addition to acknowledging that after several negotiating meetings “the The difference between the two parties remains huge and impossible to reduce.
In particular, it reproaches the committee “for refusing to relax” its position on certain requirements that, if met, “would endanger the sustainability and viability of the company in the future”, for which reason “they are unassumable by management ”.
Among these, he cites the real CPI salary increase, without being linked to business development and its benefits, in the management’s opinion “the only way” for the company to maintain its level of activity, as well as all the work and well-being it generates. and with which it contributes to the development of the region”.