Now yes, after months of unsuccessful talks, the union organizations (UGT and CCOO) and employer organizations (CEOE and CEPYME), signed the V Agreement for employment and collective bargaining (AENC). Many hours of debate and discussion have been necessary, and also of pressure inside and outside the meetings, but in the end we have managed to get the employers to sit down to negotiate to end up signing this agreement. An AENC that has the purpose of promoting collective bargaining at the sectoral and company level, establishing a series of parameters that can serve as a guideline for negotiators, thereby helping to unblock many of the collective agreements that are currently stopped.. And we wanted to give the text a broad term of three years (covers from 2023 to 2025), with the intention of providing a stable framework for collective bargaining for a sufficient period.
At a time when the cost of living has increased considerably, and those who have suffered the most from this rise are working people, this agreement will allow this loss of purchasing power to be minimized. As you have read, the increase will be 4% in 2023, 3% in 2024 and 3% in 2025. To this, let us not forget, a review clause is added with increases of up to an additional 1% if inflation exceeds these increases, with the aim of recovering wages. However, the agreement qualifies the need for negotiators to take into account the specific circumstances of each area, since each company has been able to face very unequal growth situations. With these wage increase guidelines, a very significant boost is given to collective bargaining as both parties assume the need to recover the purchasing power of wages in the following three years.
But the wealth and plurality of the agreement can be said to be indisputable. We have obviously addressed the salary issue, but also the many other issues, such as: teleworking and digital disconnection, establishing the guidelines to give a definitive boost in collective bargaining to these two new phenomena in the world of work; equality between men and women, delving into the necessary instruments to achieve it; disability, giving the criteria so that collective bargaining does not forget a group that requires real measures for its inclusion in the world of work; diversity and LGTBI issues, because we live in a plural world and the company must be a safe and inclusive reflection for all people; sexual and gender violence, where collective bargaining, as it has always done, must continue to be involved to put an end to this scourge; the ecological and digital transition, because the implementation of technologies cannot be carried out haphazardly and without determining the strategy and path to follow; or health and safety at work, addressing the update of the current regulations on occupational risk prevention, since it is becoming obsolete.
The path of progress must be social and this document advances in this. Aspects that, today, and without a doubt, concern us a lot.. We must, through collective bargaining, address all those aspects that may affect all workers, especially the most vulnerable people.
Social dialogue is the best tool for social and economic progress, and from UGT we will not stop promoting it
We are obliged to continue making collective bargaining the most effective instrument to improve the lives of all working people. Social dialogue is the best tool for social and economic progress, and from UGT we will not stop promoting it. This agreement joins two of the most important agreements in our country in the last decade, the labor reform and the pension reform. Two agreements that, unlike what was previously experienced, are made by and for working people, preventing the impoverishment and loss of purchasing power to which we have been subjected for many years. For this reason, we celebrate that an agreement of these characteristics has finally been reached with the employers, and we will not stop fighting so that, with each passing day, social and labor rights improve progressively.