Unions threaten future mobilisations as they take to the streets on May Day

The CCOO and UGT unions have announced growing future mobilisations if negotiations to modify collective agreements for a new wage increase are not unblocked.

The unions announced the move, ahead of the annual May Day marches to commemorate International Workers’ Day, Europa Press reports on May 1.

“As everyone knows, the Collective Bargaining Agreement is blocked, if it is not unblocked, the unions will carry out a process of growing mobilisation around the negotiation of collective agreements,” the CCOO´s secretary general, Unai Sordo, said.

Thousands took to the streets, along with members of the communist CCOO and the 1888-founded UGT, across Spain.

The march in Madrid began at midday and was attended, by union leaders Pepe Álvarez (UGT) and Unai Sordo, and by the Vice President and Minister for Labour, Yolanda Díaz, and the spokesperson of the Executive, Isabel Rodríguez.

Díaz announced shortly before the start of one of “the most important demonstrations in the world” that the government will set up a commission of experts to address the “great reform of Spanish law, the Statute of Labour of the XXI century”, and that in a few weeks they will work with social partners to develop a law of institutional participation.

The origins of International Workers´ Day date back to May 1, 1886, in Chicago.

Chicago unionists, anarchists, reformers, socialists, and ordinary workers concentrated in the city to spark a national movement that called for an eight-hour day.

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