The unions CCOO and UGT figure in more than 90% tracking the strike in the leather goods sector against “employer misogyny.” They demand that the business community adapt categories professionals of the staff – mostly women – because they are earning up to 26% less than they really deserve. “The employer does not want to sit down to negotiate and end this clearly unfair situation,” criticizes the general secretary of CCOO in Girona, Belen Lopez. In Catalonia, of the approximately 2,500 people employed by the sector, the majority (about 1,800) work in the plants of the multinational Louis Vuitton. At the factory in Campllong, one was held this afternoon resounding protest.
The strike in the leather goods sector has been called in front the immobility of the employer to review the professional classification of staff. Most of them, women. The CCOO and UGT unions criticize that, during the negotiation of the agreement, the employer undertook to adapt them within three months. But five have already passed and the situation has not changed.
In Catalonia, the most important company in the sector is the French multinational Louis Vuitton (with plants in Barberà del Vallès, Santa Perpètua and Campllong). They are also sitting at the negotiating table for the agreement representatives of Loewe and smaller craft workshops.
This Tuesday’s strike, the unions point out, has a majority following. CCOO and the UGT put it at more than 90% – especially Louis Vuitton – and warn that it is a “clear warning” to the employer to sit down to negotiate, close an agreement for the reclassification of staff and end “inequalities” in the sector that “widen the gender gap.”
To express their displeasure, this afternoon the unions have called one concentration in front of Louis Vuitton’s plant in Campllong. Of the 300 people on the staff, 95% are women and many are seamstresses. More than a hundred factory workers took part in the protest, chanting slogans such as “Don’t sew today! Don’t sew today!”, Sounding pots and shouting “those who entered in the afternoon shift.
“The Lowest”
The chair of the works council, Tania Alamo, explains that since Louis Vuitton opened the plant eleven years ago, the workers are “within the lowest professional classifications of the whole agreement”. Specifically, those of first and second class specialists.
From this plant come, above all, handbags and wallets. “We are calling for at least second-class officers; we may not be doing one luxury productand that we charge what we charge “, criticizes Álamo.
The general secretary of CCOO in Girona says that the situation in the sector is “clearly unfair” and “discriminatory”. “It can’t be that it’s a woman who does the job that puts her in a lower category; we demand that they be given what they deserve, because we’re talking that they get paid up to 26% less than it really belongs to them, “he added.
López also criticizes Louis Vuitton for trying to “dismantle” the strike by offering a 5% salary increase on the eve of the strike. “It is a rather clumsy strategy to try to confront staff, because in no case does it recognize an increase in professional category, which is what consolidates salaries,” she said.
His namesake at the UGT, Maxi Rica, stresses that this is the first time a strike has been called on Louis Vuitton and defines the conflict as “clearly a misogyny of employers”. “It can’t be that being a woman has different conditions, and it’s happening here,” she said.
“We need to end these practices and break the patriarchal structure; what the employer should do is sit down and negotiate, to end these old and stale ways of classifying staff according to sexual condition,” he concludes. Both CCOO and the UGT already warn that if the conflict is not unblocked, the protest will continue.