Madrid (EFE).- The recovery of purchasing power is the main demand of the UGT and CCOO for a May Day that includes notice to the employers of general mobilization if they do not negotiate a salary agreement and that is held on the eve of elections in which unions believe the stakes are high.
“If there is no progress in the agreement for employment and collective bargaining (AENC) we are going to go to an intense mobilization process in the second part of the year (…) CEOE will know how far they want to take the mobilizations”, he said in a round table the general secretary of the CCOO, Unai Sordo, was released.
“The CEOE has to feel the encouragement of the streets demanding that they put an end to greed and usury that business profits represent in some cases,” added the general secretary of UGT, Pepe Álvarez.
“We know how the mobilizations begin, but not how they end”, both union leaders have insisted, who at the moment do not want to talk about a general strike, but who have given as an example the current mobilization in France against the pension reform or the one that knocked down the Spain the pension reform of the PP years after its approval.
Motto: “Raise wages, lower prices, spread profits”
Under the motto “Raise wages, lower prices, distribute benefits” the CCOO and UGT have called dozens of demonstrations throughout the country on May 1 to demand a framework agreement from employers that serves as a guide for collective agreements and to also demand to the Government to move a piece in the fiscal field to transfer income to households that need it.
Both unions have given themselves an approximate term until the summer to close the salary negotiation or break it, because they do not want to indefinitely extend a process in which CEOE and Cepyme “have not made any proposal that shows their willingness to dialogue.”
The perception of the unions is that the employers are not being co-responsible in the current price crisis and they warn them that their resistance to the negotiation will mean the effective death of the AENC, a “useful” tool that was born in 2010 with the commitment for the salary moderation to overcome the financial crisis.
“There must be a distribution of wealth and if there is not, the conflict will grow,” said Álvarez, who recalled that 2022 has already been a year of greater labor conflict at the sectoral level, which has allowed the signing of numerous agreements with some type of wage guarantee clause, one of the elements rejected by the employer for a framework agreement.
Sordo recalled that the review clauses already protect 21% of workers with a collective agreement, a percentage that rises to 42% only for agreements closed in 2022.
Workers stake a lot in elections
For the unions, this May Day must also serve to take stock of what has been achieved in an electoral cycle that is coming to an end, because the workers are at stake “a model of health, education, care for the elderly or politics of housing”, in the words of Sordo.
“We will call for the vote from autonomy and non-partisanship, but we are neither neutral nor equidistant, we will support the vote for progressive options,” said the CCOO leader.
In this regard, the UGT leader has indicated that it is time to value the fruits of the labor reform to curb temporary employment, the promotion of ERTE or the pension reform as an instrument for a dignified retirement.
But without forgetting, he said, the 3 million unemployed people and the around half a million people “without papers” who cannot work either.