The CCOO and UGT unions have reached an agreement in principle with the employers’ association AGFAE within the negotiating committee of the collective agreement for the sugar industry, with salary increases that avoid the indefinite strike called in the sector, as l ‘reported the unions. in a press release communicated and collected by the Europa Press agency.
Concretely, this agreement, which comes after more than 12 hours of negotiations yesterday at SIMA and 11 meetings, makes it possible to “guarantee the maintenance of purchasing power for the next three years and to recover a significant part of what was lost in over the previous three years. », Indicate the union centers.
The unions indicated that the sugar employers’ union softened its position this Wednesday and that this principle could be achieved according to which the yeast employers’ union (Lesaffre and AB Mauri) did not join, which continued “its attempt to block the agreement until the end,” denounce the workers’ organizations.
Salary increases until 2026
Thus, in the negotiations, progress has been made up to salary increases of 4% for 2024 and 2025, and 2% in 2026. In addition, the unions explain having succeeded in recovering the salary review clause. For this agreement, if the increase in the CPI from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2026 exceeds 13%, there will be a salary review from January 1, 2027 with a ceiling of 2 points.
Another of the agreements was the creation of a new payment of 500 fixed euros per year, which could reach 1,200 euros, negotiating within each company the conditions to be able to reach the maximum, while if there is no do not agree, the lump sum will be 800 euros.
In addition, an improvement was achieved in the additional teams in those with four and five teams, going from three euros to four euros per day from January 1 of this year, which amount to five euros per day from 2026.
The unions indicated that the modification of certain other agreements of the current collective agreement was agreed beforehand, such as the extension of the duration of the fixed-term contract to nine and 12 months depending on the percentage of workers with a fixed-term contract indeterminate, the form of the call for discontinuous permanent positions in accordance with recent judicial decisions or the maintenance of the opposition competition and the possibility of an open and mediated selection process up to levels 11 and 12 A.
The workers’ negotiators of the agreement consider that with their advances and concessions, “this is a positive agreement in general terms for all workers in the sugar and yeast sector.”
