Spain: No central pay agreement yet signed for 2009

With trade unions and employers differing sharply on the appropriate pay policy in the current economic downturn, by late February they had not been able to conclude a central agreement setting a framework for lower-level collective bargaining in 2009.

Every year since 2002, the central employers’ organisations, CEOE and CEPYME (representing small and medium-sized employers), and the main trade union confederations, CCOO and UGT, have reached an “interconfederal agreement on collective bargaining”, laying down a framework for private sector bargaining at industry and company levels.