The Adegi employers and the ELA, LAB, CCOO and UGT unions have resumed this Tuesday the negotiations for the renewal of the Gipuzkoa metal agreement, which affects about 40,000 workers in the territory and that were interrupted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first meeting took place on February 18 when employers and unions formed the metal table in charge of negotiating a new agreement for the sector, which remains under the conditions of the one signed for the 2010-2011 period.

The pandemic has forced the negotiations to be postponed until Tuesday, which have been resumed with a meeting at the Adegi headquarters in San Sebastian, where the centrals have presented their protest platforms.

Adegi has indicated in a statement that it has set the “absence of conflict” as the “only condition” for the agreement so that a “constructive negotiation” can take place.

The business organization has expressed its “negotiating will” to achieve a “good agreement for companies and their people based on the principles of the new company culture”.

At the end of the meeting, the four unions with representation at the table (ELA, 48.76%; LAB, 34.37%; CCOO, 12.39%; and UGT, 4.46%) have sent separate communications to give to know the content of their claims.

IS IT OVER THERE, the majority union in the sector, has said that it has raised the need to increase wages, reduce working hours, “shield itself” from labor reforms and “eliminate precariousness.”

LAB, for his part, has indicated that one of the “main axes” of his proposal will be “to provide the collective agreement with stability and legal security”, since the one currently in force, which dates from 2011, is “prior to the labor reform” .

CCOO has emphasized the need to “stabilize the sector and provide it with an ambitious set of contents” that includes, in addition to the “recovery of purchasing power”, the stabilization of employment or the elimination of the agreement on “articles harmful to the working class”.

UGT considers it “vital” to renew the metal agreement that has left “40,000 workers for almost a decade without a provincial agreement” and asks the rest of the unions and the employers to make a “real effort on the part of all” to achieve a good agreement, “so necessary to get ahead after the economic crisis” caused by the pandemic.

He also calls for salary increases, indefinite ultra-activity and other improvements in the “quality of employment”, while stressing that wages and worsening conditions cannot be allowed to “become a measure to overcome the crisis” .

The Gipuzkoa metal negotiations will continue on July 16 with a new meeting of the table that will also take place at the Adegi headquarters.