PSA plant in Trnava. (source: TASR )
Even though a mediator was invited to the negotiation on a new collective agreement, trade unions and the management of the Trnava-based carmaker PSA Peugeot Groupe Slovakia have failed to agree on an increase to employee salaries. Consequently, the local KOVO PCAS trade union organisation has announced a strike alert.
The mediator presented a compromise solution to the dispute on Wednesday, May 9. He suggested raising the monthly salaries of all employees by €53, but the trade union rejected this proposal as being too low. It is demanding an increase of 10 percent for all employees while the carmaker is offering an average increase of 6.8 percent.
The strike alert starts on Friday, May 11 at 06:00. If they fail to agree within the subsequent lawful 30-day time limit, the trade unionists will launch a vote on a potential all-out strike, informed František Gajdoš, vice-chair of the trade union organisation on May 10.
The mediator was assigned to the collective bargaining process based on a decision by the Labour, Social Affairs and Family Ministry on April 23. In the first round of the talks, the mediator met separately with the two parties on May 3 but it was then decided to hold joint negotiations with all three parties.
“Despite his [the mediator’s] enormous effort, after almost seven hours of talks, the proposals of both parties hardly converged at all,” said Gajdoš, as cited by the TASR newswire.
The average monthly wage of blue-collar workers at PSA in Trnava was € 1,106 in 2017 and was the lowest out of all three major carmakers in Slovakia, the other two being Volkswagen Slovakia in Bratislava and Kia Motors Slovakia in Teplička nad Váhom.
