The National Association of Large Distribution Companies (Anged), which includes companies such as El Corte Inglés, Carrefour or Ikea, among others, has proposed to the unions a 7% wage increase in the four years of the next agreement that began to be negotiated yesterday. The offer is structured with guaranteed linear salary increases of 2.5% per year and the possibility of reaching 10% with variable remuneration.
The position is "far removed" from the one that the four majority unions, Fetico, CC.OO., Valorian and UGT, took yesterday to the negotiation of the large distribution agreement, the one that groups the largest number of workers in Spain, some 260,000 .
The workers' representatives claim increases of 6% for the first two years of the agreement and 3.2% in 2025 and 2026. That is, more than 18% altogether.
To this they add "measures to dignify work in the sector, such as a review of the working day and work on weekends, as well as a national pension plan and training that ensures a professional career within companies," as they explained yesterday.
From Anged, they justify their proposal on the basis of the historical claims of the unions and recall that they are not taking into account "the excessive rise in costs" that the large distribution sector is facing in matters such as energy, logistics or own products for sale.
The large distribution claims to address in the negotiation issues "pressing for trade such as the high rate of absenteeism" and recalls that between 2013 and 2020 there was a real increase in purchasing power of 5.8% for workers. "This represents an increase above the CPI," they pointed out from Anged. After that, the pandemic arrived and “a complicated challenge for the sector. Therefore, the set of union requests, all legitimate, should go hand in hand with the consolidation of the sector, without losing sight of employment as the main asset and occupation of all the negotiating parties”, they pointed out.
For his part, Miguel Benegas, president of Valorian, made it clear that the negotiation will not be easy. “Right now, the positions are very far apart. According to the increase that they propose, it will barely exceed the minimum interprofessional salary. The rise in wages is going to be the nuclear issue in this negotiation," he warned.
