BADAJOZ, 26 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The confederal secretary of the CCOO, Unai Sordo, has defended that Spain needs to improve wages “for justice and economic efficiency” and has criticized these employers’ associations, which “are not all but a good part”, who are “blocking” the collective agreements.

Some employers, he has warned, that they are going to count on the mobilization of workers and unions, given that they are going to promote “a process of labor conflict” if the employers continue with “this attitude.”

In the same way, he stressed that the Government of Spain “cannot remain oblivious to this reality”, given that collective bargaining is a competence of unions and business organizations, “in agreement”, but the “blocking of wages is a problem country”.

Given this, it has demanded from the central Executive that if CEOE and Cepyme “maintain this attitude”, “touch fiscal policy”, for through, for example, a minimum corporate tax of 15% of the accounting profit of companies raise between 5 and 8,000 million euros to be able to enable benefits that, for people who do not reach 1,000 euros a month, serve to face the increase in the costs of electricity, or of the supermarket, “of the costs of to live”.

“And the Government I think cannot be profiled in this scenario,” Unai Sordo said in statements to the media after holding a meeting with the president of the Junta de Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara, the Government delegate in the region , Yolanda García Seco, and the general secretary of the CCOO in Extremadura, Encarna Chacón, among other authorities, on the occasion of their participation in the II CCOO Summit for a decent train for Extremadura, at the union’s headquarters in Badajoz.

For Sordo, “if there is something comparable to the anachronism of the railway in Extremadura, it is the employers’ association of the Extremaduran countryside”, in view of which he considered that they are “two vestiges of the 19th century” because “it cannot be” that in a region like the Extremadura, at a time of “high” agricultural prices and a perspective of “high” agricultural production, the attitude of the business organizations in the community “is that of blocking collective bargaining”, that of “refusal to raise of the Interprofessional Minimum Wage”.

“Proposing neither more nor less than a rise in working hours to absorb the effect of the rise in the Interprofessional Minimum Wage”, he remarked, to reiterate that “it cannot be” and defend that wealth must be distributed, through wages.

At the same time, he stated that this is happening throughout Spain, “which is a process in which the CEOE is not being co-responsible for the moment our country is experiencing”, in Extremadura “it takes on a truly worrying tint”, in line with which has made a call for co-responsibility, and to give way to collective agreements that have to improve the wages of tens of thousands of workers in this land, and has estimated 65,000 people to whom the agreement of the field in Extremadura is applied.

“And they have to see their salaries improved, it cannot be that with inflation of 8 percent salaries are frozen, this is a huge problem of social equity and it is a huge problem of economic development for the country,” Sordo defended, for whom Spain needs to improve wages “for justice and economic efficiency”, and if it does not improve them “the evolution of internal demand is going to slow down the economy”, “it has already happened in the first quarter”.

Given this, he wanted to make a complaint “to those employers who, in addition, have the face”, if the expression is allowed, he has said, to cross out as “demagoguery” to say that a part of the jobs that are not covered do not have to to do with wages: “no, it does have to do with wages, unfortunately this is the case, there are jobs that are not being filled in coastal areas of Spain, in inland areas of Spain, simply and simply because the salary conditions that are offered are misery”.

In addition, Unai Sordo has added, “they don’t even pay to cover the expenses for going to work”, for which he has criticized those employers “who have made a fortune during the pandemic, things must be said as they are”, since “Thousands and thousands of companies have been saved through public money from the ERTE” with 40,000 million euros, and they are asking for the European recovery funds to be passed on to them.

Thus and in this attitude, “then they maintain a wage freeze when costs are passed on to prices”, and hence the inflation that exists, he said, to stress that “it is enough to look for a way out of the crisis” and that the workers pay it again. “A complaint against these employers, they are not all but a good part, that they are blocking the agreements and that they are going to count on the mobilization of the workers, the unions, we are going to promote a process of labor conflict if the employers continue with this attitude”, he concluded.