The wages agreed in agreement They have climbed an average of 2.89% until February, a figure slightly higher than that registered in January (2.81%), but they remain 3.2 points below the last CPI, whose interannual rate rose in the second month of the year to 6.1%, according to data taken from the collective bargaining statistics of the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy.
This salary increase is less than the agreed 8% increase between the Government and the unions for the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) for this year and that the rise experienced by contributory pensions (+8.5%) and is somewhat more in line with the guidelines set out in the last pact of agreements that signed CCOO, UGT, CEOE and Cepyme, whose validity ended in 2020.
unions want renew this agreement with business organizations and have already made a proposal to negotiate with employers. In fact, they plan to meet this Monday, March 13, to discuss this negotiation.
In their proposal, released a few days ago, the CCOO and UGT ask the CEOE initial pay raises 5% for 2022, 4.5% for 2023 and 3.75% for 2024with the inclusion of a mixed salary review clause that addresses both the maintenance of the purchasing power of salaries and the economic situation of companies, measured by the evolution of their profit margin.
In this way, the unions have reformulated their salary proposal introducing new criteria on the salary review clause, which will no longer be linked only to the evolution of prices, but also to the economic progress of the companies.
Thus, CCOO and UGT propose that the salary increases initials proposed for each year of the period 2022-204 (5%, 4.5% and 3.75%), an additional increase is added due to the deviation from inflation in each of the years of the agreement.
In addition, said additional wage increase, which will be fixed through the review clausewill be linked to the information obtained through the Economic Information System for Collective Bargaining (SIENC) so that the recovery of the purchasing power of wages is related to the economic evolution of the sectors through “reliable data “.
According to the union proposal, this salary recovery clause will preferably operate at the end of each year and, in any case, it will be the collective agreements themselves that establish other sequences of entry into force of the clause: at the end of the 2022-2022 cycle. 2024 or a percentage distribution in both times (a percentage of the recovery at the end of the year and another at the end of the cycle).
The unions defend that the negotiation with CEOE of this agreement pact cannot go beyond May 1, and if they do not reach an agreement, they have urged the Government to establish a minimum contribution to Corporate Tax of 15% or 20% of the total benefits, an approach that CEOE has not liked.
44 agreements with an average increase of 5.2%
Most of the agreements registered until February in the Labor statistics were signed in previous years, although they take effect in 2023.
Specifically, up to the second month of the year there had been a total of 1,941 collective agreements with economic effects in 2023, of which only 44 have been signed this year, with an average salary increase of 5.21%. The rest, 1,897, were signed in previous years and include a much lower average salary increase of 2.79%. These agreements registered until February gave protection almost six million workers.
72% of workers do not have a review clause
According to the Labor statistics, most of the agreements registered until February They do not have a salary review clause to avoid loss of purchasing power. Specifically, of the 1,941 agreements recorded, only 16.6% (322) had a wage guarantee clause and of these, 228 contemplate that this be applied retroactively.
The agreements that include a review clause affect just over 1.64 million workersof the almost 6 million covered by the agreements registered until February, the equivalent of 27.4% of the total.
Thus, the bulk of workers (seven out of ten) they lack safeguard clauses in their collective agreements, although the number of workers protected by this instrument has increased compared to the one existing in December 2022 (21.08%) and January 2023 (27.2%) and is close to that of March 2022 , where it exceeded 29%.
Three out of ten agreements include increases of more than 3%
Of the total number of agreements registered up to February, 1,441 were company agreements, with effects on 366,400 workers and an average salary increase of 2.76%, while 500 were sectoral agreements and covered 5.6 million workers, with a salary increase average of 2.90%.
The average working hours agreed in the agreement stood at 1,753.3 hours per year per worker up to February (1,704.6 hours in company agreements and 1,756.5 in higher level agreements).
Of the 1,941 agreements registered up to February, a total of 56, the equivalent of 2.9%, contemplated salary freezewhile 32.6% of the agreements, three out of ten, included a salary increase of more than 3%, the average being 4.79%.
More than half of the agreements, specifically 52.6%, involve average salary increases that range from 0.5% to 2.5%. The statistics do not include any agreement with a salary cut.
Workers affected by “disconnections”
The Labor statistics also reveal that up to February there were 155 non-applications of agreements, above the 129 in the same period of 2022 (+20.1%).
These ‘drops’ affected a total of 6,516 workers, compared to the 4,635 affected in the first two months of 2022, which represents an increase of 40.6%. The ‘removal’ of the agreements supposes the revision of the labor conditions in the companies.
