The majority unions have set out to warm up the winter. The two workers’ centrals have agreed this Thursday call mobilizations in February “to demand the implementation of social reforms”. After a separate meeting of their respective Confederate Council (CC OO) and Committee (UGT), both organizations have issued a joint statement in which they do not specify what type of protest they are going to convene and refer to a meeting that the leaders of the two unions will maintain next Tuesday.
The list of demands made by the unions, after the meeting of their highest management bodies between congresses, has been repeated for months. Although in recent weeks they have increased the intensity in their statements and with an addition: the rise in the Minimum Interprofessional Salary. For both, it is “unjustifiable the refusal of the Executive to raise” the legal floor of the salaries of workers and remind the Government of their commitment to raise it to 60% of the average net salary during the legislature.
To this first petition, the “repeal of labor reforms” is added, in reference to that of 2010, approved during the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and that of 2012, that of the PP. The annulment of the 2013 pension reform, until now suspended, is also required. Along with this are issues that are already open, but pending resolution: the extension of the ERTE, the signing of a new state wage agreement or a crash plan against workplace accidents.
One of the points that most irritates the unions is the appearance in the media of proposals on the pension reform that do not appear in the documents that are delivered to them, specifically referring to the extension of the calculation period of the pensions of 25 to 35 years. “We are not going to accept it,” they stress.
It also causes indignation that the Executive does not resume the talks to repeal the labor reform. “We must put an end to this delaying tactic so as not to disturb the bosses,” they add. Both CC OO and UGT believe that the time has come to re-negotiate the changes to the labor reform issues that they were negotiating when the pandemic broke out: priority in the application of sectoral collective agreements, recovery of the indefinite extension of the agreements expired (ultraactivity) or subcontractors.
