Spain: 5th Employment and Collective Bargaining Agreement

On 10 May, all social partners signed the 5th Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining, which contains recommendations for branch and company-level collective bargaining on various topics, while at the same time providing for a general wage rise of 4% in 2023, 3% in 2024 and 3% in 2025. The agreement includes a revision clause: if inflation is higher than these figures, wages will be increased by a maximum of an extra 1% per year. The topics that the social partners are invited to cover in branch and company-level agreements include: worker participation in technological and digital transformation processes, gender equality, protecting workers’ health, teleworking, digital disconnection, protecting diversity and LGTBI issues. The text includes guidelines on how to deal with bullying and with sexual and sexist violence. The UGT trade union confederation sees this agreement as a way to reduce precarious employment and guarantee “social peace thanks to fairer distribution of wealth” (see press release). The CCOO confederation is delighted to have signed this national agreement, rather than having to negotiate agreements branch by branch: this ”scenario is more favourable to working people, even though we now have to translate all of these undertakings into collective labour agreements, and improve their working conditions” (see press release). The view of the employers’ organisation CEOE is that the agreement confirms “collective bargaining as a governance model for relationships in the workplace” (see press release).