World Strike-Zara workers have joined and are on strike in Spain
2022.11.24 13:46
World Strike-Zara workers have joined and are on strike in Spain
Budrigannews.com – On Thursday, dozens of Zara assistants staged a protest in Madrid outside the largest Zara store to demand higher pay. Additionally, on the eve of the retailer’s Black Friday sales campaign, some employees in the company’s hometown in northwest Spain went on strike.
Inditex, Zara’s owner (BME:)According to unions that are seeking better wages for their members in the face of galloping inflation, the government of Spain agreed last week to pay a one-time bonus of 1,000 euros (or $1,041) to all full-time shop workers in Spain in February.
In addition, Inditex has offered to gradually increase monthly wages by around 200 euros by 2024. This proposal was accepted by UGT and Comisiones Obreras, two of the largest unions in Spain, but protesters who are requesting at least double that amount rejected it.
Anibal Maestro, a leader of the CGT union that organized the Madrid rally, stated, “Inditex is increasing its prices and improving its profits, while employees’ wages are lagging behind.”
“We made you a millionaire, you give us precarious pay” and “I work for Inditex but don’t make it to the end of the month” were signs carried by protesters.
Maestro stated, “We want a real wage rise…not the 1,000 euros bonus offered as candy.”
Inditex has 44 stores in the town of A Coruna, where the first Zara store opened in 1975.Two of those, a Massimo Dutti store and a Zara store, were closed on Thursday, and approximately 1,000 workers were getting ready to go on a one-day strike on Black Friday.
According to the unions, the monthly wages of shop assistants at Inditex stores in Madrid and A Coruna are less than 1,400 euros.
Carmina Naveiro, a union leader in A Coruna who has worked at Zara for more than two decades, noted that online orders had increased the workload of shop assistants. This is in contrast to approximately 2,000 euros for a warehouse worker.
She stated, “We will call for more protests in December and January if we don’t get better wages.”
