The second global collapse has caught many companies off guard. Macroeconomic forecasts have plunged, and so have price levels. Managers now predict that we will start 2012 with 2% inflation rate, a half point less than salaries increased according to labor union agreements.
CEOE leader Joan Rosell is right to ask for revisions to salary agreements that promote raising pay by 2.5 for the next year. Labor unions will neither talk about nor listen to lowering this percentage and demand that the agreement is settled, but what our labor market needs is the capability to carry out this kind of adjustment. The unionist attitude is irresponsible and needs to be changed.
Rigid collective bargaining is precisely one of the burdens that hinder job creation in Spain, impeding the ability to adapt quickly to changing labor costs and reroute laid-off workers somewhere else in the labor market. The latter observation is particularly true in terms of temporary workers.
If the wage increase is not revised for 2012, our companies will once again lose their competitive edge at a critical moment, and the unemployment crisis will continue to bleed our country dry. We are repeating tired mistakes from 2009, when prices retracted as salaries continued to rise up to 3%. Employers' organizations get it, but the unions are not learning from past lessons.
Ironically, by aiming for the stars under the pretense of a struggle for better salaries, workers and the labor force end up suffering the most.
