Spain: employers and unions pave the way for the textile retail sector’s first collective agreement

Featured image of the article Spain: employers and unions pave the way for the textile retail sector’s first collective agreement

An article by Cécile Thibaud

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25 March 2026 à 14h10

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4 minutes

Publication: 25 March 2026 à 14h10

Reading time: 4 minutes

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The Spanish employers' association for major textile companies (ARTE) and two of the unions involved in negotiations (CCOO and Fetico) signed a preliminary agreement on 23 March for the sector's first national collective agreement. This text covers nearly 200,000 employees at companies such as Inditex, Mango, Tendam, Uniqlo, and Primark. The social partners have committed to standardising remuneration, unifying hiring practices, and significantly improving working hours across all major fashion chains.

An article by Cécile Thibaud

Add mind HR to your sources
Publication

25 March 2026 à 14h10

Reading time

4 minutes

Publication: 25 March 2026 à 14h10

Reading time: 4 minutes

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This marks the end of a historical anomaly. Despite being the home of Zara and Mango, Spain’s ready-to-wear chain employees previously lacked a national collective agreement. They relied on company-level agreements and a series of highly local retail collective agreements with disparate and sometimes outdated frameworks. This created inequalities between employees within the same chain from one Spanish region to another.

Over three years of negotiations

Following years of disagreement with reta

…
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Article authors
Featured image of the article Cécile Thibaud
Cécile Thibaud Correspondent in Spain
Featured image of the article Cécile Thibaud

As Madrid correspondent for mind RH since 2021, I cover news developments in Spain's world of work, focusing on legal developments and collective bargaining, particularly around work-life balance, equality and inclusion policies, which have been hot topics in the country in recent years.

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