MADRID (Reuters) -Zara owner Inditex reached an agreement to raise salaries in its Spanish stores by an average 20%, Spain’s two largest unions, CCOO and UGT, said on Thursday night.
The salary increases reached as much as 40% in the areas of Spain that were the least well paid, UGT said in a statement.
The increase means that Inditex will pay a minimum wage of 1,500 euros ($1,610) a month to shop assistants and a minimum of 2,041 euros in the case of workers with higher responsibilities at the stores, CCOO added in a separate statement.
Union groups said Inditex also agreed to continue increasing salaries in line with inflation over the next three years.
Inditex did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Like most countries, Spain has been grappling with strong inflation in recent months. Its European Union-harmonised 12-month inflation was 5.8% in January, up from 5.5% in December and above the 4.7% expectation from analysts polled by Reuters.
CCOO and UGT, which represent more than half of the workforce at Zara shops in the country, have been in negotiations with Inditex to extend the pay rises and benefits to all shop assistants working for the company in Spain after shop workers in Inditex’s hometown of A Coruna received a 25% pay rise in December.
In November, Inditex had agreed with UGT and CCOO to pay a one-off bonus of 1,000 euros in February for all full-time shop assistants employed across Spain, and now it has agreed to pay the same bonus next year.
Inditex employs 165,000 people in 177 countries, with a third of all staff based in Spain, according to its annual report. About 86% work in its 6,477 shops and most are women.
Among other brands Inditex owns are Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear and Bershka.
($1 = 0.9318 euros)
(Reporting by Charlie Devereux and Corina Pons; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lincoln Feast.)
