Inditex is facing a call for a strike among the group of shop assistants (the majority are women) in the province of A Coruña, headquarters of the multinational and where the group's founder, Amancio Ortega, opened his first Zara store in the 1970s.
The Galician union CIG has confirmed the strike for November 24 and 25, to which the around a thousand store workers from Zara, Stradivarius or Bershka in the province are called. The protest coincides with the 'black friday' campaign and the start of the Christmas sales season.
The union organization, the majority in Zara in A Coruña, is going to mobilize in the street after a meeting this Thursday with the company, in which representatives of CC.OO have also participated. and UGT. Carmiña Naveiro, CIG union leader and shop assistant, has explained to this newspaper that there has been no agreement with Inditex.
The union demands an improvement in the working conditions of the saleswomen, to put them on a par with other groups in the group, such as logistics. According to Naveiro, the base salary of a Zara saleswoman in A Coruña (collective trade agreements are usually provincial) is slightly above one thousand euros per month, with different scales that can increase it up to 1,400 euros. That of warehouse workers is around 2,000 euros, he has detailed.
While CIG demanded an increase of 500 euros per month until 2025, the group has offered to increase it by 203 euros in three years, with a first higher increase in the first year and subsequent minor increases.
Union unity, however, has not been possible. CC.OO. and UGT do not support the strike call and have opted for the path of negotiation with the company. Lucía Trenor, head of the CCOO Services Federation. in Galicia, he comments that they have consulted the Inditex proposal with the female workers, and they mostly opt for the agreement to be signed, "so we do not see the need to go to conflict."
The strike call comes after a demonstration by shop assistants in the city of A Coruña on November 6, where hundreds of workers gathered. "We are the visible face of Inditex but we have not made it to the end of the month", could be read on the posters, disseminated by CIG through its social networks.
Inditex broke its sales and profit record in the first half of this year and predicted a good winter campaign. The group's sales between February and July reached 14,845 million euros, 24.5% above those of a year earlier, while it earned 1,794 million euros.
In total, the multinational that employs 165,000 people in 177 countries. Around 86% of them work in the company's 6,477 stores, and at least seven out of 10 employees are women, according to Inditex's latest financial reports.
