Six months after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, suggested linking wages to productivity, tomorrow the negotiations will begin between employers and unions to discuss this issue. The union´s position is already clear: maintain wage restrictions until 2014, but sign collective agreements this year, and maintain salaries tied to prices until revision in 2014. In this situation, the CEOE President met yesterday with its Economic Committee, which included more than thirty experts.
The findings will be discussed today at the Board meeting but can be summarized in two. On one hand, there is a lot of fear that the agreement will cause great job losses after apply a wage law revision in 2012.
With a bleak economic outlook and inflation nearly up 3 percent, companies could not support a wage increase for their workers as a way to return the money lost by the slow growth of these years. That is, would cause a sudden acceleration in wage increases for Spanish companies.
The second conclusion is that the review of the wage law clause should be cancel or at least postpone until 2014. However, to extend the agreement and postpone the implementation of the salary review, the unions have set a bunch of unbearable conditions for their employers, according to the organization.
