Spanish government wants local bargaining

The Spanish government plans to make major changes in the structure of collective bargaining in Spain. In future it wants pay increases to be negotiated primarily at company level.

The proposals would mean that industry-level agreements, either for the whole country or, more commonly for local areas, would be limited to other more procedural issues.

The unions have rejected this arguing that it would leave a high proportion of the workforce without a collective agreement as many companies have relied on the industry-level agreements to set pay.

The view of the employers seems more mixed. While they object to the state intervening in an area they consider should be left to negotiations between the two sides they have also argued for greater flexibility.

In addition the latest official figures, for the first half of 2001, show that while pay in company-level agreements increased by 2.85% compared with the previous year's, pay in industry-level agreements went up by 3.48%. This compares with annual price increase of 3.7% (August).