Deal Seals Labor Peace for Renault Spain Past 2020

MADRID – Renault Spain signs a competitiveness and employment agreement with three of its five unions designed to secure the future of the French automaker’s four plants in Spain.

The deal ensures Renault IV hatchback and Megane C-car models now assembled in the Palencia plant will continue exclusively to be manufactured there at least until 2020. New models could be awarded to the facility but not before 2020.

The agreement also locks in production of the future eighth and ninth generations of “K” engines for Europe at the engine plant in Valladolid, while the transmission plant at Seville is designated the preferred plant for assembling the TX30 gearbox family.

The Valladolid plant, which currently assembles the Captur CUV and Twizy electric vehicle, will be assigned an as-yet-unidentified new model. Valladolid also will receive a new aluminum injection workshop to come on line in 2018.

Upon signing the competitiveness and employment agreement, the 13,000 Renault Spain workers will receive a €500 ($570) bonus. The unions will receive a cumulative 3.5% salary increase, starting with a 0.5% raise in 2017 and 1% raises in each of the following three years.

The pact calls for the creation of 2,000 permanent jobs, of which 1,400 will go to current employees working under temporary contracts.

The agreement also implements a so-called hours bourse system in which workers at the four plants agree to work up to 20 Saturday-morning or Sunday-night shifts, allowing management to reduce the length of a normal workday when market demand is weak or inventories are excessive. Employees later compensate for those hours by working without payment on Saturdays or Sundays.

The unions also have agreed that when market conditions require it, Renault Spain can create voluntary 12-hour work shifts on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, with a €1,350 ($1,540) monthly salary paid to new workers hired for those shifts.

The unions also accepted the addition of four yearly work days in the agreement, which is to take effect by the end of this spring.