MADRID, 2 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), Antonio Garamendi, rules out reaching a conflict with the unions and advocates bringing positions closer to reaching the V Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC).
In an interview on Cadena SER, collected by Europa Press, Garamendi downplayed the statements of the CCOO and UGT general secretaries, Unai Sordo and Pepe Álvarez, on May 1 and recalled that they must be “framed” within from its context.
“The reality is that we are working on it and whenever work is being done I usually say that discretion is usually the key to reaching a successful conclusion. The table is open. It is not true that we have risen, but last year what was raised by the unions we could not accept them, but that negotiation has continued to work”, has assured the president of the employers’ association.
Garamendi has insisted that the contacts between the parties “have been permanent” and that he himself congratulated Sordo and Álvarez on May 1 for International Labor Day.
The president of the CEOE has shown himself optimistic about the possibility of “moving forward” with the AENC, and has recognized that all parties will have to “win or lose a little bit” to resolve the differences.
However, he has qualified that it is “a generic recommendation” and that what is valid are the agreements that are signed by sector or by company.
In this sense, he recalled that 10 million workers in Spain, out of the 17 million private employees, are already covered by an agreement. “It means that something is being done,” he pointed out and added that the average increase agreed this year is 4.8%.
However, Garamendi has admitted that the “signature rate is slower” and has recognized that, facing the AENC, “it would be better if it were not an election year”, because that “pervades everything”.
Garamendi has also asked the Government to stop “looking for the guilty” in businessmen” and look “at itself”.
The president of the employers has defended that the CEOE works with institutional loyalty and complying with article 7 of the Constitution, which includes the role of unions and employers.
He has also stressed that the CEOE works “with independence and a sense of State” and is “apart from partisanship”, although businessmen are “affected by the public, like everyone else”.
In this sense, he has denied that he had to give explanations to the PP about the labor reform or the agreements signed with the unions and the Government, and has stressed that he only gives explanations “to the companies and businessmen of this country”.
