According to the results announced by the Workers’ Committee (CT), in the vote held on Thursday and Friday, there were only 620 votes in favor and 3,426 votes against the aforementioned pre-employment agreement at Autoeuropa’s Volkswagen car plant in Palmela, in the region. Setubal.
The coordinator of the TC, Fausto Dionísio, accepts the results with “democratic humility” and interprets the result of the vote as “a mandate to renegotiate the agreement signed with the administration”.
Fausto Dionisio recalls, however, that the advance work agreement “provided for a wage increase of 1.7% in 2022, 1.2% in 2023, and a single payment of € 500 per worker in 2021, with a minimum increase of € 25, too. The difference would be if the inflation rate was higher than the forecast for a global increase of 4.6% for the next three years.
“CT thought this was an agreement that included a reasonable salary update in the face of the uncertain situation we are in, due to the epidemic and the constant changes in the auto sector. But most workers have a different opinion and CT will transfer this workers’ attitude to company management.” .
The CT co-ordinator also indicated that the company had initially intended to reduce Saturday and Sunday payments and substantive premiums by 50%, but abandoned that claim and agreed to improve workers’ health insurance.
In the advance agreement rejected today by the vast majority of workers, management and CT also committed to creating conditions to ensure a new product is entrusted to the Palmela car plant, in order to meet the end of MPV production. (MPV), scheduled for mid-2022, and potential market volatility for T-Roc.
T-Roc and MPV are two car models currently produced at the Volkswagen plant in Palmela.
Autoeuropa, with more than 5,000 employees, 98% of whom have a lasting relationship, produced in 2020 a total of 192,000 cars and 20 million parts for other factories of the German group, which account for 1.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 4.7% of Portuguese exports. .
(The news was updated at 17:06)
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