by Corina Pons
MADRID (Reuters) – Dozens of Zara salespeople demonstrated outside the global fashion giant’s biggest store in Madrid on Thursday to demand wage hikes, and some workers in its hometown in northwest Spain, went on strike on the eve of Black Friday.
Inditex, owner of Zara, agreed last week to pay a one-time bonus of 1,000 euros in February to all full-time workers at its stores in Spain, according to unions demanding better wages in the face of runaway inflation.
Inditex has also proposed to gradually increase monthly wages by around 200 euros by 2024, a proposal accepted by two of Spain’s biggest unions, UGT and Comisiones Obreras, but rejected by protesters who demand at least double that.
“Inditex is raising prices and improving profits, while employee wages are lagging,” said Anibal Maestro, a CGT leader, who called for the rally in Madrid.
“We want a real salary increase (…) not the bonus of 1,000 euros offered like candy,” added Anibal Maestro.
Inditex now has 44 stores in the city of La Coruña, where the first Zara store opened in 1975. Two of them, a Zara store and a Massimo Dutti store, were closed on Thursday, and some 1,000 employees were preparing to leave. go on strike the following day, on the occasion of Black Friday.
The monthly salary of salespeople in Inditex stores in Madrid and La Coruña is less than 1,400 euros, according to the unions.
By comparison, a storekeeper earns around 2,000 euros, said Carmina Naveiro, union official in La Coruna, who has worked at Zara for more than 20 years, adding that online orders have increased the workload for sellers.
“If we don’t get better wages, we will call for further protests in December and January,” she added.
Inditex employs 165,000 people in 177 countries and around 86% of them work in its 6,477 stores.
(Report Corina Pons; French version Kate Entringer)
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