After seven meetings without agreement, the Vizcaya Metal unions have chosen to raise the tone. In a press conference, in which all the centrals that make up the negotiating table have participated, they have announced the creation of a joint platform. They also warn that they will resume the confrontation if the “total” blockade of the employers’ association to the negotiation of the new agreement persists.
The main stumbling block remains the salary review. The unions propose a rise in the IPC 1, while the companies offer 2%. “We are creating the phenomenon of the working poor,” they have denounced. Employee representatives also ask that seniority be unfrozen, that the working day be adjusted or that subrogation and hiring through ETT be limited.
In fact, they do not share the “catastrophic” reading that they say the companies have transferred to them during the negotiations regarding the consequences that the increase in the price of energy is having on business results. As they have explained, the surveys carried out by the employers themselves reflect that the industrial sector is one of those with the highest growth forecast; only 4% of the companies expect losses while 80% assure that they will maintain the results or even improve them.
Through the newly created platform, they hope to “break” the blockade and promote “a real negotiation and not an empty theater without content,” they have denounced. In fact, they do not rule out a return to the confrontation and the strikes that the sector experienced in 2019. They assure that on that occasion the signing of the agreement, which has expired in 2021, was achieved thanks to the “mobilization of thousands of workers ». “If necessary, it will be done again,” they say.
Because in the trade union centers there is no possibility of not signing a new agreement. At the moment they are already presenting motions in the companies in the sector so that the company committees adhere to their negotiations.
The next negotiating meeting is scheduled for this week. They have reminded the employers that it will be a new “opportunity to give a positive response” to the demands and that, therefore, it is in their hands to “avoid” conflict and a scenario of strikes. “If they continue to block the negotiation and make it impossible to improve working and living conditions, the unions will respond,” they have warned.
