Zara’s 50th birthday becomes day of protest for Inditex employees

To mark the 50th anniversary of Zara, employees from various fashion chains owned by the Spanish Zara parent company Inditex took to the streets in La Coruña, Spain. They protested against what they see as a “gradual” reduction of their labour rights by the company's management. The group is publicly accused of deliberately disadvantaging sales staff throughout the province, a practice they themselves describe as a “form of punishment”.

While media attention last Friday was focused on the celebrations for Zara's 50th anniversary – an anniversary that Zara and the Inditex Group celebrated with a video directed by Steven Meisel featuring 50 iconic models, a limited capsule collection and a pop-up activation around the first Zara store in La Coruña – Inditex employees used the platform for their protests. Directly in front of that first Zara store on the corner of Calle Juan Flórez and Avenida de Arteixo, employees gathered to emphasise their demands. They once again drew attention to what they see as the gradual erosion of the labour rights of Inditex employees in the province.

The Confederación Intersindical Galega (CIG), the leading trade union representing Inditex shop workers in the province of La Coruña, stated that this corporate policy is part of a strategy to increasingly shift collective bargaining to the national level, and thus away from the provincial level. According to the CIG, this step is interpreted as a reaction and also as a “punishment” for the combative stance that Inditex employees in the province of La Coruña have traditionally shown in their commitment to better working conditions.

This stance resulted in the highly publicised protests of 2022, which ultimately led to an agreement that significantly improved working conditions for Inditex employees in the province. As a result of the agreement, the Spanish fashion group was forced to extend the agreed improvements to the entire country. With the signing of a historic agreement in February 2023, it was possible to stop the escalation of the protests, which had already spread to the workforce in other Spanish provinces where Inditex operates.

Since then, the company seems to have become convinced that negotiations on the working conditions of shop employees should in future be conducted exclusively at national level, away from regional particularities. This stance would make it possible to implement the harmonisation of working conditions for all Inditex employees in Spain, regardless of chain or geographical location, as demanded by the trade unions CCOO, UGT and other representative associations.

The CIG, on the other hand, sees this change of strategy primarily as an attempt to move the negotiations away from the provincial level and thus from La Coruña. This is the region whose combative stance in 2022 formed the basis for the provincial agreement that ultimately led to a significant improvement in the working conditions of all Inditex shop employees.

Following the signing of the historic agreement, the Inditex national negotiating table was reconvened on March 22, 2024. The aim was to achieve further progress in the gradual improvement of the working conditions of shop employees. However, according to the CIG, these promised improvements have not yet been formalised. At the same time, the trade union criticises that the negotiating table at provincial level is no longer being convened – a level at which, in their view, the greatest successes for employees have so far been achieved, both inside and outside La Coruña.

The CIG is therefore continuing to demand that Inditex comply with its agreement to resume negotiations at provincial level. This demand led to a controversial incident in June 2024, when trade union delegates from the CIG occupied the Inditex headquarters in Arteixo. After several days, they were eventually removed from the building by the Guardia Civil.

“We are very pleased to be involved in the success of this great company, but it must not come at the expense of cutting our rights,” denounced Lucía Domínguez, a CIG delegate, during the protest last Friday, May 9, in front of the Zara store on Juan Flórez street in La Coruña.

According to the trade union, as also confirmed by CIG delegates during the protest, the group is deliberately trying to weaken the power to act of the provincial committees. These are the bodies through which crucial improvements in working and salary conditions have so far been negotiated. In addition, Inditex wants to undermine the role of the CIG as the majority representative of employees in La Coruña.

Despite an existing agreement to resume negotiations at provincial level, according to the CIG, all outstanding labour and social issues that have been unresolved for three years would continue to be blocked. The company argues that these issues are now being dealt with in other national negotiating forums. In doing so, Inditex refers both to the specially initiated national negotiating table and to the first national collective agreement for large fashion and shoe chains promoted by the Asociación Retail Textil España (Arte) – a process that was significantly supported by the group precisely during the period between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, amid the greatest tensions between Inditex and its sales teams.

Against this background, the trade union CCOO has now decided to suspend negotiations at national level for the time being. Instead, it wants to prioritise the regional negotiating tables again in order to achieve concrete improvements in the working conditions for employees in the retail sector.

All of this, the CIG criticises in a statement, is part of “a strategy to alienate labour relations from the workers in La Coruña”, which is also seen “as a kind of punishment from Inditex”. This is in response to the fact that, as Domínguez emphasises, “we started the fight here to enforce demands that the company then had to extend to the rest of the country”. A “punishment” that is now continuing with a tightening and a greater restriction of some of the labour rights from which Inditex employees in La Coruña have previously benefited. In the CIG's view, this is “a further step in the process of centralising labour relations initiated by Inditex after the mobilisation of 2022, which led to a historic agreement on wage increases”.

Cuts in the granting of permits and suspension of new recruitment measures to reinforce

To illustrate how Inditex is allegedly deliberately cutting benefits and worsening working conditions for employees in the province of La Coruña, the CIG is initially referring to a number of measures that the company has already implemented. Inditex has announced that it will restrict the use of permits as much as possible in future and will take a particularly strict line with regard to the return of hours. According to the trade union, this has gone so far that the company management has openly announced that it will refuse permits that have never been rejected before and will significantly tighten the requirements for granting licences and other flexible working time measures.

In addition, the company is refusing to hire new employees for the branches throughout the province of La Coruña. This decision means that the existing teams have to absorb the additional workload caused by absences due to illness or holiday periods.

“The company has openly announced that it will restrict the use of permits and the return of hours as much as possible in future, including measures that have never been refused before,” the CIG stated during the rally. Inditex is also planning to significantly tighten the criteria for granting licences and other flexible working time arrangements that have been won through trade union struggles. The trade union criticised that the company is implementing a “tightening of the access criteria to the rights enshrined in the agreements signed at provincial level” and is applying “the most restrictive interpretation” of these agreements, with implications for “the staff of all Inditex chains”.

In parallel with these restrictions, according to the CIG, Inditex is continuing its previously announced policy of non-replacement in the province of La Coruña. This is justified by the fact that it is more expensive for the company to pay employees hired through temporary employment agencies the same conditions as permanent employees – a right that, the trade union emphasised, “is explicitly guaranteed by current labour legislation”. This strategy of non-replacement is leading to a significant increase in the workload of existing teams and is also increasing the risks in the workplace. However, this is not only affecting employees, but also customers, who are increasingly finding shops where absences due to illness or holidays are no longer being compensated for.

Against the background of these worsening labour relations in La Coruña, the CIG warned that it would not accept either cuts in rights or non-compliance with existing provincial agreements. These agreements, according to the trade union, “were hard-won by the employees of the Inditex branches”. Likewise, it would oppose “the next round of collective bargaining being undermined in order to enforce a centralisation that – as has already been proven – will not bring any progress in improving our working conditions”, emphasised Domínguez from the CIG.