The unions CC.OO. and UGT already have agreed on their proposal for a salary increase that they will present to the employer to negotiate a new Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC), the document that serves as a reference for the negotiation of the different agreements, but whose conversations are paralyzed since last spring.
The general secretaries of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, and of the CC.OO., Unai Sordo, will present the proposal tomorrow, to whose content La Vanguardia has had access. What they will propose is a salary increase of 4.5% this year, 4.5% in 2024 and 4% in 2025. The main novelty lies in the safeguard clauses that are being proposed, and that are not only related to the inflation, but another concept is incorporated, that of the salary benefits of the sector. As proposed by the unions, the clauses will take into account 50% of the benefits of each business sector, and the remaining 50% of inflation.
Relating clauses with benefits is a possibility that Unai Sordo put on the table on January 12, picking up the gauntlet for one of the traditional positions of the CEOE, that of relating increases to the situation of the companies, and which has now been incorporated as a fundamental element in the proposal that the two unions will present tomorrow.
It is an approach with which CC.OO. and UGT will try to revitalize the negotiation of an AENC that has been in a dead end for months, largely due to the lack of interest of the employer, which has downplayed its importance on numerous occasions, stressing that it is only a reference and that what counts are the agreements of each sector and of each company that end up being signed.
In the AENC negotiations in the first half of the year, what derailed the potential agreement were the safeguard clauses, which the unions consider essential to preserve the purchasing power of workers, hit hard by rampant inflation, 6.1% in February according to the latest data. On the other hand, the CEOE considers that these clauses are unacceptable since they can incorporate wage increases that end up being unaffordable, and that they are inflationary in nature.
That is why it is novel to establish these clauses that act based on the situation of the sector. In this way, the unions assume one of the employers' proposals, although this does not ensure that the agreement is easy. In recent months, the position of the CEOE has been very distant from entering fully into this negotiation.
In 2023, with the data for January, 1,774 collective agreements had been registered, covering 5.4 million workers, with a wage increase for this year of 2.81%, therefore well below inflation. Of these agreements, only 17% (298) incorporate salary guarantee clauses, which covers close to one and a half million workers. This is the context in which the negotiations to renew the AENC will take place, in the new attempt that the unions want to promote with this proposal.
