On the occasion of Zara’s 50th anniversary, employees went to the streets: Inside the various fashion chains of the Spanish Zara mother Group Inditex in La Coruña, in order to protest in their view “step-by-step” reduction in their labor rights. The group is publicly accused of targeting the sellers: to specifically disadvantage in the entire province of the entire province, a practice that they themselves describe as a “kind of punishment”.
While last Friday the media attention was at the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Zara-an anniversary, the Zara and the Inditex group with a video staged by Steven Meisel with 50 iconic models, a limited capsule collection and a pop-up activation around the first Zara business in La Coruña-used the stage for: inside: Your protests. Immediately in front of that first Zara store on the corner of Calle Juan Flórez and the Avenida de Argeixo, the employees gathered to emphasize their claims. In doing so, they once again drawn attention to the gradual erosion of the labor rights of the inditex employees in the province.
The Confederación Intersindical Galega (CIG), the leading union representative of the Inditex shop employees: Inside in the province of La Coruña, explained that this corporate policy was part of a strategy to shift collective bargaining more-and thus deduct from the provincial level. According to CIG, this step is interpreted as a reaction and at the same time as a “punishment” for the combative attitude that the Inditex employees in the province of La Coruña traditionally showed for better working conditions.
This attitude resulted in the much-noticed protests of 2022, which finally led to an agreement, in which the working conditions for the Inditex employees were significantly improved in the province. As a result of the agreement, the Spanish fashion group was forced to expand the agreed improvements to the entire territory. With the signing of a historical agreement in February 2023, the escalation of the protests, which had already expanded to the workforce in other Spanish provinces in which Inditex has already worked.
Since then, it seems to have prevailed within the company that negotiations on the working conditions of the shop employees should be led exclusively at the national level – far from regional peculiarities. This attitude would make it possible to implement the adaptation of working conditions for all inditex employees in Spain-regardless of the chain or geographical location-the CCOO unions required by the CCOo, UGT unions.
In this change of strategy, on the other hand, the CIG primarily sees the attempt to displace the negotiations from the provincial level and thus from La Coruña-the region whose combative attitude in 2022 created the basis for the provincial agreement, which ultimately led to a significant improvement in the working conditions of all inditex shop employees: inside.
After signing the historical agreement, the national negotiating table of Inditex was called again on March 22, 2024. The aim was to make further progress in the gradual improvement of the working conditions of the shop employees: to make it inside. However, according to the CIG, these promised improvements have not yet been formalized. At the same time, according to the union, the negotiating table at the provincial level is no longer called – a level where, in which, in view, the greatest successes for the employees have so far been achieved, both within and outside of La Coruña.
The CIG therefore continues to demand that Inditex complies with its agreement to resume negotiations at the provincial level. As early as June 2024, this claim led to a controversial incident when the CIG union delegates occupied the headquarters of Inditex in Argeixo. After several days, they were finally removed from the building by the Guardia Civil.
“We are very pleased to be involved in the success of this large company, but they must not go at the expense of reducing our rights,” said Lucía Domínguez, delegate of the CIG, during the protest last Friday, May 9th, at the Tsara business on Juan Flórez in La Coruña.
According to the union, as it was also confirmed by CIG delegates during the protest, the group is targeted to weaken the power power of the provincial committee- the committees that have been negotiated in terms of working and salary conditions so far. In addition, Inditex wants to undermine the role of CIG as the majority representative of the employees in La Coruña.
Despite an existing agreement on the resumption of the negotiations at the provincial level, all open work and social issues that have been unsolved for three years would continue to be blocked. The company argues that these questions are now being treated in other national negotiating forums. Inditex refers to both the first national negotiating table, which was initiated by the Auxiación Retail Textil España (Arte), first national collective agreement for large fashion and shoe chains- a process that was supported in the middle of 2022 and early 2023, in the middle of the greatest tensions between Inditex and its sales teams.
Against this background, the CCO union has now decided to initiate the negotiations at the national level for the time being. Instead, one wants to admit regional negotiating priority again in order to achieve concrete improvements to the working conditions for employees in retail.
All of this, the CIG criticizes in an explanation, is part of “a strategy to alienate the work relationships: inside La Coruña”, which is also seen as a kind of punishment of inditex “, which takes place in response that, as Lucía Domínguez emphasizes,” we have started the struggle here to enforce the rest of the state had to expand ”. A “punishment”, which is now continued with a tightening and a stronger restriction of some of the labor rights, of which the inditex employees in La Coruña have so far benefited, which in the view of the CIG “is another step in the process of the centralization of the work relationship initiated by Inditex, which led to a historical agreement on wage increases”.
Reasons in the granting of permits and suspension of new hiring measures for reinforcement
In order to illustrate how Inditex, in her view, is cutting services and the working conditions for the employees in the province of La Coruña worsen, the CIG initially refers to a number of measures that the company has already implemented. Inditex announced that it would be as much as possible to use the use of permits in the future and to drive a particularly strict line in relation to the return of hours. According to the union, this went so far that the management opened openly to refuse permits that had never been rejected before, and to significantly tighten the requirements for the granting of licenses and other working hours flexible.
In addition, there is the company’s refusal to hire new employees for the branches in the entire province of La Coruña. This decision means that the existing teams would have to compensate for the additional workload, which arises, for example, by failures or vacation times.
“The company has openly announced that it will restrict the use of permits and hourly returns as far as possible – including measures that have never been refused,” said the CIG during the rally. Likewise, inditex is planning to significantly tighten the criteria for the granting of licenses and other flexible working hours that have been scope for union battles. The union criticized that the company implemented a “tightening of the access criteria to the rights that are anchored in the agreements signed at the provincial level”, implementing the most restrictive interpretation of these agreements-with effects on “the staff of all inditex chains”.
According to CIG, Inditex continues in parallel to these restrictions. This is justified by the fact that it is more expensive for the company to pay employees to the same conditions as permanent employees via temporary employment agencies – a right that, according to the union, “emphasized” is explicitly guaranteed by the applicable labor legislation “. This strategy of non-occupancy leads to a significant additional burden on the existing teams and at the same time increases the risks at the workplace. However, this has an impact not only on employees, but also on the customer: inside, the increasingly business in which disease or vacation-related failures are no longer compensated for.
Against the background of these tightening work relationships in La Coruña, the CIG warned that it would neither accept the cuts of rights nor the non-compliance with existing provincial agreements-agreements that, according to the union, “were laboriously fought by the employees of the Inditex branches”. Likewise, it will be opposed to the fact that “the next round of collective bargaining will be undermined in order to enforce a centralization that – as already proven – will bring no progress in improving our working conditions,” emphasized Lucía Domínguez from the CIG.
This article was used with digital tools translated.
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