The CCOO and UGT unions have signed the V Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) with the CEOE and CEPYME. Its main content is to establish a framework for the negotiation of agreements with a salary increase of 4% for 2023 and 3% annually for 2024 and 2025. If inflation exceeds these rates, there would be a revision clause of up to 1% more. The increases are not guaranteed since they will have to be negotiated agreement by agreement. The IV agreement was signed for the years 2017 and 2020, therefore, it leaves out the two years of highest inflation 2021 (6.5%) and 2022 (5.7%). A 12.2% is lost along the way. In other words, while salaries have had a downward trend, business profits almost doubled in 2022, and there is no need to go into offensive details about the scandalous profits of banks or electricity companies.
We are clear that these recommendations further strengthen the loss of purchasing power that the working class has been suffering. Furthermore, as is known, this agreement is not binding, only a recommendation, a pact of maximums that they are not even going to apply to millions of workers; who are not even going to be affected by this agreement, which is already bad in itself, because these increases are not binding. From our point of view, it is a confirmation of the level of surrender to the demobilization and domestication of these unions, a submission to economic power that has no precedent.
After more than a year announcing strikes with slogans such as "Salary or conflict" and "hot autumn", CCOO and UGT give the employers' association an agreement that seems designed to suit the employers. An empty agreement, with increases lower than inflation and that does not even oblige employers to respect these increases. In other words, these unions sign a pact that is actually a declaration of intent, without the obligation to transfer it to collective agreements. In each company and in each sector, employers will decide whether to follow the recommendation of this agreement or not.
This agreement will mean a setback for the majority of workers, it makes the labor and social situation continuously and systematically worsen, creating an increasingly critical reality. Another miserable gift to the employers so that the workers pay for it. It seems like a mockery to us.
We demand that those who call themselves representatives of the workers do not turn the "social dialogue" into the common grave where labor and social rights are buried.
This new betrayal of the workers of the Spanish State puts an end to the recovery of purchasing power for which these "class unions" claimed to fight last May 1st, just fifteen days ago. We denounce this new attack on the rights of working people and demand urgent measures to ensure that making ends meet is not an agony for thousands of families.
