Iberdrola workers have gathered in front of the company's headquarters in Bilbao to demand negotiations that ensure salary updates linked to the CPI and to denounce that "not even the interconfederal agreements on collective bargaining are respected."
The mobilizations have taken place throughout the week in front of the corporate building, with daily gatherings of employees in Plaza Euskadi, and culminated this Friday with a demonstration supported by the trade union sections of CCOO Industria, UGT FICA -Federation of Industry, Construction and Agriculture- and ELA, which hundreds of workers have joined.
The march started and ended at the main entrance of the Iberdrola Tower, where union spokespersons presented their demands to the media. Meanwhile, inside the building, the energy company's shareholders' meeting was being held since 10:30 AM.
The general secretary of CCOO Industria in the Basque Country, Luis Mouliaa, stressed that "the colleagues have been here all week in front of the headquarters" to demand "something very simple: negotiations within the scope of their agreement that guarantee the CPI."
As he detailed, the agreement in dispute affects 9,000 people, whom he defined as the "foundations of this company," who "generate 6 billion in profits" and who, despite this, "have suffered a loss of purchasing power of 19% in recent years."
In his opinion, "it cannot be that a company like Iberdrola has a model of collective bargaining and labor relations more typical of other eras than of the 21st century."
"Nothing more is asked for. CPI. In all other matters, reduction of working hours, improvements in teleworking, in the pension plan and others, we will also reach an agreement, but the company must start by putting the CPI," Mouliaa reiterated.
On the other hand, the UGT Euskadi representative Ismael Manzanal recalled that the workforce has been sitting at the negotiating table for 16 months and questioned Iberdrola's "model of labor relations," "the one that seems to be the country's leading company wants for its workers, a model where not even the interconfederal agreements on collective bargaining are respected."
In his opinion, "a company like Iberdrola" cannot "base" that model "on confrontation," and he has conveyed his support to the people who have maintained the protests throughout the week to "support them in all their demands, because it is a just demand."
The general secretary of UGT in the Iberdrola union section, José Antonio López, has emphasized that "this would never have happened with other managements in past times." "When it makes more millions than ever, when its numbers are stratospheric, that is when the staff is worst off," he lamented, alluding to the gap between the company's profits and the workers' salary situation.