On 17 January, employers’ body Confebask together with the four main Basque region’s trade union bodies (ELA, LAB, CCOO, and UGT) secured a cross-industry agreement that dedicates a specific forum for collective negotiation within its own region. The goal of the agreement is to ring-fence all Basque region negotiated agreements and give them precedence over national collective agreements. This is the first great social pact signed by all the parties since 1999 and should better protect the traditionally industrial region’s social acquis, where working conditions have often been better than anywhere else in Spain.
Main thrusts of the agreement. While still to be formally validated by the heads of each of the negotiating bodies, the agreement will run for a four year term, even though its contents have an ‘indefinite’ term and can be put to renegotiation by the signatories as of 31 December 2020. The text establishes ‘priority application of regional and interregional agreements entered into in the Basque region over all sector conventions and national agreements both pre-existing and signed post this act
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