Spain: employers and union organizations reopen dialog to unfreeze collective bargaining

The technical negotiators of the CEOE and Cepyme employers’ confederations and of the Workers’ Commission’s and UGT union federations created a joint workgroup (two representatives per union and two representatives per employers’ organization) to evaluate after two weeks the situation of the agreements in waiting. If they manage to define a joint course of action, this cooperation could open the way for a pluriannual agreement, as unions propose. This agreement would define the wage increase policy – in any case quite moderate – for the next three years. In march, the termination of the wage agreement tacitly renewed for years, left negotiators without a general negotiation framework and blocked the practical implementation of the agreements (see our dispatch No. 090256). Unions think that 40% of employees were affected by the non-renewal of collective agreements. They say that 1,846 collective agreements are paralyzed. They also denounce the fact that 369 agreements signed aren’t being respected. Until now, employers’ organizations denied the problem and refused to look into the situation. But they changed their minds and acknowledged the problems brought by the absence of a reference framework. Union representatives rejoiced with the resumption of dialog. Employers’ organizations repeated their will to “modernize” collective bargaining to give less weight to sectoral agreements and more room for maneuver to businesses.