More than a hundred works councils, union sections and RLTs, convened by the Spanish journalists’ unions CCOO, UGT and FeSP, will take to the streets on 1 March 2023 to demand decent wages and working conditions. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) expresses its support for the Spanish journalists’ unions and the striking journalists.
For the first time, the works councils of Vocento, Unidad Editorial, Prisa and Promecal have joined forces to demand that the management of the daily press sector meet to negotiate pay rises for all staff of their newspapers, magazines and all the companies involved. This demand comes after more than a decade of wage freezes, and in some cases substantial cuts, which fall below the updated Interprofessional Minimum Wage (IWW).
With these mobilisations, the unions want to express their support for the tired staff in the face of the unwavering position of the communications companies, which categorically refuse to recognise the loss of purchasing power of the workers in the sector. Over the last decade, they have accumulated up to 27% loss of salary, aggravated this year by the extraordinary rise in inflation.
In addition, in recent years, staff have not only had to cope with wage freezes and pay levels unworthy of university graduates, but have also been forced to respond to digital and multimedia tasks that have been added to the already saturated workload of the print media. The unions believe that the closed-mindedness of the business leaders is due to the impasse in the negotiation of the state agreement for the daily press by the Association of News Media (AMI), which is proposing a ridiculous and offensive 1% wage increase without retroactive effect.
The EFJ stands in solidarity with workers in the daily press sector who will gather at the gates of their workplaces on Wednesday 1 March.