CCOO de Industria and UGT-FICA have reached this Thursday a pre-agreement on the Collective Bargaining Agreement for the Meat Industry with the employers’ associations Anice and Fecic, which provides for wage increases of 4% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027, and 2% in each of the last two years of the agreement’s term, 2028 and 2029.
As CCOO has detailed in an information note, the increase set for 2026 will have retroactive effects from January of this same year.
The agreed document also incorporates a wage review clause linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), with the aim of ensuring that the workforce maintains its purchasing power if inflation exceeds the agreed increases.
The signing of this pre-agreement, which will provide certainty to the sector over the next four years and covers 126,000 workers, comes after the sector strike that began last Monday was called off yesterday afternoon and was also scheduled for November 12 and 13.
From CCOO de Industria, they have highlighted the "enormous effort" made by the workforces in backing massively the three days of stoppage, which has made it possible to achieve progress that just a week ago seemed "unthinkable" and brings the text closer to the content of the initial reivindicative platform. In the area of working time, the pre-agreement provides for a reduction of the annual working hours to 1,746 hours in 2028 and to 1,744 hours in 2029.
Likewise, mandatory subrogation is incorporated for companies that provide services of veterinary assistants.
PENDING MATTERS AND RATIFICATION
Despite the understanding reached, the negotiation between unions and employers’ associations will remain open to close the rest of the matters that will form part of the final agreement until 2029. Among the issues that remain to be defined are paid leave, ergonomics and work rhythms, pay during vacations, medical examinations, temporary contracts, the probation period, and voluntary termination.
The final text will also add specific protocols in matters of LGTBI, mobility, and severe weather, will strengthen the functioning of the joint commission, and will incorporate a specific regulation on workers’ accident mutuals and the Sectoral Observatory for Occupational Health and Productivity.
The pre-agreement will now be submitted to affiliation validation through assemblies that CCOO will convene in the coming days at the main companies and in the territories with the greatest impact, with the intention of signing the new agreement before November 30.
EMPLOYERS BELIEVE THE STRIKES COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED
For their part, the employer organizations Anice and Fecic have assessed positively the "effort of dialogue" by all the parties, which has made it possible to reach a "balanced" agreement that provides a response to workers and to companies and that guarantees a framework of "stability" for the meat industry in the coming years.
However, despite the final understanding, both employers have regretted that the three days of strike carried out between November 9 and 11 have entailed a "cost both for the workers who backed it and for the sector’s companies". According to the monitoring data across the country, participation has not exceeded 25% at any time and, in many plants, the impact has been "very limited".
"Even so, the strike has disrupted productive activity and its impact will be reflected in the results for November and for all of 2026," the employers stated in a press release, emphasizing that the companies have respected "at all times the right to strike, while the right of those who wanted to voluntarily go to their workplace was not always respected by the pickets in some centers".
They also underscored that the text finally agreed "barely differs" from the proposal that the employer organizations presented last week in a last attempt to avoid the conflict. "The differences are limited to the removal of the cap in the wage review clause and the distribution of the reduction in working hours between 2028 and 2029," they pointed out.
In this regard, the employers have insisted that the strike "could have been avoided", while expressing their desire that "lessons be drawn from this process, because the rights of workers must always be above any other interest".