Four marathon days – and many others in the past –, mediation by SIMA (Interconfederal Mediation and Arbitration Service) and even so, unions and employers have not been able to reach an agreement to approve a new collective agreement. After more than 12 hours meeting in a tense day of negotiation, employers and unions met for this Wednesday at 3 p.m. after studying the latest proposal that had come through arbitration. This is an agreement for three seasons that would start with 21,000 euros this year, 22,000 in the 2024-25 season and would end at 23,000 in 2025-26.
This proposal was initially accepted by the F League clubs, but the players also needed to give the green light to the agreement. The unions conveyed the latest proposal to the captains of each club and they conveyed it to their teams, so the process took longer than with the clubs, with which the conversation was more direct. In recent days some players had publicly shown their disagreement with the strike. Footballers such as Patri Ojeda (Sporting Huelva) or Esther Sullarstres (Sevilla) considered the proposal of 20,000 euros from League F to be “reasonable”. Be that as it may, what is unanimous is the enormous wear and tear of the footballers, as Aitana herself recognized yesterday. Bonmatí in the tribute in his native Sant Pere de Ribes. “Honestly, I'm a little tired of fighting every year. I hope that all the institutions that have to step up do it now because we always end up harmed,” she claimed. “We have been focusing on fights for a long time and we also deserve to one day enjoy all our successes, which is very difficult to do,” she lamented.
It seemed that the agreement was imminent, but in a new twist of script, after 10:30 p.m., unions and employers sat down again at the negotiating table where they had sat twelve hours before. Minutes later they came out to report that they were scheduled to meet again tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. at the SIMA headquarters. A few hours in which they will be able to evaluate the proposal in depth and decide to approve it, thus managing to unblock the negotiations and finally approve a new collective agreement for the F League.
With the competition professionalized since last season, the 2020 agreement had become completely obsolete and both unions and the employers themselves understood the need to renew it. Finding a balance between a decent salary for the players and an acceptable figure for all clubs has been complicated, especially due to the great disparity of budgets managed in the F League. The reality of clubs like FC Barcelona or Real Madrid, than that of independent entities such as Sporting de Huelva or Madrid CFF.
With the intention of approving a new framework, the negotiating table was established in July of last year. In May the first proposals were known, evidencing the distance between the parties. The unions asked to reach 30,000 euros in three years, while the employers offered 16,500 euros in the first year, 17,500 in the second and reaching 19,000 in the third. Months passed without reaching an agreement and in September the social bank announced the call for a strike for the first two days of the League. The mediation of SIMA (Interconfederal Mediation and Arbitration Service) then came in to bring positions closer together. After much negotiation, the last offer from League F had been 20,000 euros gross per year, while the unions – Futpro, AFE, Futbolistas On, CCOO and UGT – asked for 23,000. Now, the proposal on the table ranges from 21,000 to 23,000 euros in a three-year agreement. This would represent a notable increase compared to the previous agreement, which established a minimum salary of 16,000. Partial contracts will also end and footballers will always be full-time. These improvements will protect the youngest players and those from the most modest clubs in a League in which the average salary is between 30,000 and 40,000 euros.
If an agreement is reached this Wednesday, the second day of the strike will be called off and the F League will begin rolling this weekend, after the first day could not be played due to the protest of the soccer players. And with the thorniest issue resolved, there will be other aspects to be reflected in the new agreement such as maternity conditions or the drafting of a forceful protocol against sexual harassment that will help avoid cases such as those experienced in Rayo or Alhama.
