The general secretary of CCOO, Unai Sordo, stated this Monday that he does not trust that the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) will be unblocked in the coming quarters, and has left open the option of promoting mobilizations and strike calls in the face of conflicts generated by the current halt in collective bargaining.
In the presentation of a study on the articulation and concurrency of collective bargaining, Sordo argued that trade unionism must make a "decisive move" to transfer the improvement of the economic situation to wages, warning that pressure will have to be increased if no progress is made in the negotiating tables.
"If the AENC is not unblocked, and it looks like it will not be unblocked, at least in the next two quarters, we have to put a tool on the table sooner rather than later to sustain the conflicts that arise in the negotiation of collective agreements in Spain," he stated.
In this regard, he advocated for launching "mobilizations" and, "if necessary," "sustaining strike processes" in response to the blockage that persists in certain areas of negotiation.
At the same time, he warned that, although average wages are advancing in Spain, around 10 million employees have their salaries practically frozen. "We have to close the 'gap' between the evolution of average wages and the evolution of wages, whatever it takes," he argued.
The CCOO leader linked part of the increase in average wages to the higher proportion of qualified workers, insisting that collective agreements must continue to be the central instrument for transferring these improvements to the entire salaried workforce.
Furthermore, he called for opening a debate on the structure of collective bargaining in Spain and proposed rationalizing certain territorial levels in order to strengthen the negotiating capacity of unions and workers.
Pérez Rey calls for adapting agreements to new challenges
The Secretary of State for Labor and Social Economy, Joaquín Pérez Rey, also spoke at the opening of the conference, who defended the 2021 labor reform and maintained that it allowed the collective bargaining to regain strength by reversing key aspects of the 2012 reform.
Pérez Rey has underlined that collective bargaining must broaden its content to respond to new economic, technological, and environmental challenges.
Among these challenges, he has mentioned the convenience of incorporating action protocols for climate disasters, promoting sustainable mobility plans in companies, regulating the effects of algorithmic management of work, and advancing in the conventional coverage of emerging sectors, such as digital platforms.
Likewise, he has defended that the regional frameworks for collective bargaining can be useful for adapting certain working conditions to the particularities of each community.
The Secretary of State has concluded that collective bargaining in Spain enjoys "very good health," with coverage extending to almost nine out of ten workers, although he has warned that it must continue adapting to new productive and labor realities if it wants to maintain its regulatory capacity.