Negotiations start on renewal of collective bargaining agreement

Negotiations have begun between the trade unions and employer organisations on the Agreement on Collective Bargaining (ANC) for 2008. Wage moderation and gender equality plans in companies are the main bargaining topics for the renewal of the agreement. Moreover, the agreement will address the development of the Spanish Strategy of Health and Safety at Work, as well as other workplace issues such as recruitment, training, job security and absenteeism.

As they have been doing since 2002, the most representative social partners at national level have started talks on the renewal of the Agreement on Collective Bargaining (Acuerdo para la Negociación Colectiva, ANC). The ANC establishes the guidelines that must be followed during the bargaining of collective agreements. Over the years, it has become consolidated as a guarantee of wage moderation and industrial peace. The employer side is represented in the bargaining process by the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organisations (Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales, CEOE) and the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (Confederación Española de Pequeñas y Medianas Empresas, CEPYME). Employees are represented by the Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras, CC.OO) and the General Workers’ Confederation (Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT).

Bargaining coincides with inflation rise

The start of the bargaining process coincided with an unexpected increase in inflation for the last quarter of 2007, and it was forecast that inflation would exceed 3.6% by the end of December 2007. This was expected to complicate the wage revisions of the many company agreements that took the December inflation level as a reference. However, the employers and trade unions were confident that they would reach an agreement before the end of 2007 and thus help to curb the price escalation.

Proposed content of new agreement

Pay determination

The social partners have stated that they will maintain the formula for determining pay, which will lead to pay increases of 2%–3%. This formula provides for a minimum pay increase equivalent to the government’s inflation target, compatible with improvements related to increased productivity. However, it is recommended that such improvements be limited in order to foster the productive investment of companies and thus sustain employment.

The trade unions call for the continuation of wage revision clauses – which currently apply to about 70% of workers – to maintain the purchasing power of pay. They have also called for other measures aimed at controlling inflation that do not involve penalising pay, such as closer control of price-fixing, particularly in sectors of the economy that are protected from international competition (ES0707049I).

With regard to pay structure, CEOE has announced that it will foster changes in the current pay regulations in order to increase the importance of variable pay and thus make collective bargaining more sensitive to the local economic situation. Employers also wish to eliminate the automatic extension of agreements in cases where no renewal agreement has been reached. Both these proposals have been rejected by the trade unions, although they are not considered an obstacle in the current bargaining process.

Gender equality issues

The main outstanding question therefore in terms of the renewal of the collective agreement for 2008 pertains to the regulatory development of the Gender Equality Law approved in March 2007 (ES0704019I). This law obliges social partners to negotiate equality plans in all companies employing over 250 workers when the particular collective agreement which was in force in March 2007 expires. According to CC.OO, this means that equality plans will be included in a total of 648 company and sectoral agreements in 2008, affecting over three million workers. The trade unions are giving high priority to the application of these measures, which were not supported by CEOE and CEPYME, and even state that the renewal of the ANC depends on the inclusion of an appendix containing the specific criteria for this bargaining process.

Health and safety at work

The ANC for 2008 is also likely to include an appendix on the development of the Strategy of Health and Safety at Work for the period 2007–2012 (ES0707019I), approved in June 2007, in addition to sections on employment and recruitment, training, flexibility and job security, and measures to control unjustified absenteeism.

Juan Arasanz Díaz, QUIT, University Autònoma of Barcelona (UAB)