Salaries set in collective agreements advanced by an average of 2.92% in March, one tenth more than the 2.91% registered in February, but remained almost four tenths below March's year-on-year CPI, which reached 3.3%, its highest level since June 2024, pending the National Institute of Statistics (INE) confirming the definitive figure next Tuesday.
According to the collective bargaining statistics that the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy disseminates each month, this average salary increase of 2.92% already chains three consecutive months with increases below 3% after 17 continuous months with increases above that threshold.
This year, unions and employers have to agree on a new Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) after the expiration, in December, of the previous framework, which suggested increases of 3% for 2025 and included a review clause that, if inflation deviated, allowed additional increases of up to 1% in each of the covered years (2023-2025).
For the next pact, UGT and CCOO have put on the table a fixed salary increase of 4% annually for the next three years, which would mean an accumulated increase in salaries of 12% until 2028.
Likewise, they propose an extra increase of 1% in agreements where the average salary is 10% below the national average salary, an additional 2% for those that are 20% below, and 3% for those that are 30% below. In the same way, they propose an additional increase of 1.5% for each year in case of inflation deviation.
The agreements signed in 2026 include a rise of 3.27%
The majority of the agreements that appear in the Labor statistics with effects in 2026 were signed in previous years, although their economic application occurs this exercise.
Specifically, as of March, 2,240 collective agreements with economic effects in 2026 have been registered. Of these, only 75 have been signed in the first three months of the year and contemplate an average salary increase of 3.27%, barely three hundredths below the preliminary CPI figure for March. The remaining 2,165 agreements come from previous years and set an average increase of 2.92%.
In total, these 2,240 agreements provided coverage in the first quarter to more than 7.3 million employees.
More than half of the workers, without a review clause
The Labor statistics show that the majority of agreements registered until March do not incorporate revision clauses to shield purchasing power. Of the 2,240 agreements accounted for, only 30.2% (676 agreements) include some salary guarantee clause and, among them, 452 foresee that it will be applied retroactively.
The agreements that do contemplate review mechanisms cover almost 3 million employees out of the more than 7.3 million covered by agreements registered until March, which represents 40.45% of the total, a proportion slightly lower than that of February (40.95%).
In this way, more than half of the workers continue without safeguard clauses in their agreements. However, the percentage of employed persons protected by this instrument continues to be 19 points higher than that of December 2023 (21.08%).
Of the total agreements in force until March, 1,676 were company agreements, with 397,437 workers affected and an average salary increase of 2.56%; 516 were sectoral agreements, which covered more than 6.8 million employees with an average increase of 2.96%, and 48 corresponded to groups of companies, with an impact on 140,381 workers and an average rise of 2.25%.
The average weekly working hours remain at 38.1 hours
The average working hours agreed in collective bargaining agreements reached by March 1,739.31 annual hours per worker (1,703.32 hours in company agreements, 1,751.23 hours in group company agreements, and 1,741.15 hours in higher-level agreements).
Translated to weekly calculation, those 1,739.31 hours represent an average of 38.1 hours, above the 37.5 weekly hours of maximum legal working day (1,712 annual hours) that the Government's bill included to reduce the working day, an initiative that failed last year after the full amendments by Vox, PP, and Junts prospered.
With March data, the average working day in company agreements stands at around 37.3 hours, slightly below the 37.5-hour target shared by the Ministry of Labor and the unions. In group company agreements, the gap is larger, with an average working day of 38.3 hours per week, the same as recorded in sectoral agreements, where the average also stands at 38.1 hours.
The workers affected by derogations decrease by 0.7%
The Labor statistics also show that until March, 146 non-applications of agreements were registered, below the 149 counted in the same period of 2025, which represents a decrease of 2%.
These 'derogations' affected 7,228 employees, compared to the 7,279 affected in the first three months of 2025, that is, a decrease of 0.7%. The 'derogation' of an agreement implies the modification of the labor conditions agreed upon in the company.