MADRID (Reuters) – Trade unions representing about 1,000 Zara shop assistants in the Spanish apparel maker’s hometown of A Coruña will meet with the company on Thursday to negotiate a pay rise, a union leader said.
CIG, one of the unions representing shop assistants in the northwestern city, is threatening to strike on Nov. 24 and Nov. 25 – during the Black Friday period – unless the company meets its demands for a pay rise of 500 euros ($519) a month, union leader Carmiña Naveiro told Reuters.
Zara owner Inditex has so far offered a rise of 183 euros per month, staggered over three years, on salaries that range between 1,058 euros and 1,400 euros a month, Naveiro said.
“We see how much the group sells and we’re tired of being the last link chain that they take into account,” Naveiro said.
Inditex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Representatives of the company’s two largest unions, UGT and CCOO, confirmed they will also attend the meeting. They have no plans to call for a strike for now.
“We’re placing our bets on negotiations because Inditex is sitting at the table,” Lucia Trenor, a union leader at CCOO said.
The shop assistants want to be paid the same as workers at the company’s logistics centres, who earn about 2,000 euros a month.
Other union leaders believe it will be difficult to negotiate wage parity with logistics centre workers but say there is pressure at the company’s factories and shops to negotiate pay rises given the soaring cost of living.
Inditex has 165,000 employees in 177 countries. About 86% of them work at the clothes-maker’s shops.
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(Reporting by Corina Pons; writing by Charlie Devereux; editing by David Latona and Barbara Lewis)