MADRID (AP) – Hundreds of retail workers quit their jobs across Spain on Monday as part of a fresh round of strikes against fashion giant H&M Group, extending a string of store closures in the middle of the summer shopping season.
More than 4,000 Spanish employees at the Swedish multinational’s brands, including H&M, Other Stories and Cos, are demanding pay increases to match the higher cost of living and protesting the increased workload associated with layoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Monday’s strike was the third day of strikes by H&M group workers this month. Flagship stores in Madrid have closed and hundreds of workers rallied outside the city’s largest H&M location to demand better conditions as online sales increasingly fragmented retail.
Union leader Ángeles Rodríguez Bonillo told The Associated Press that workers had lived with “salaries frozen for many, many years” but now found their situation “unsustainable given the economic situation and the high cost of living”.
Inflation is high in Europe and around the world after the global economy recovered from the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, forcing people to spend more on groceries, utility bills and other purchases. Consumer prices in the European Union rose 7.1% yoy in May, although Spain’s inflation rate of 2.9% is one of the lowest in the bloc of 27 countries.
Price pressures have fueled months of strikes and protests by workers across Europe pushing for wages that keep pace with inflation.
In Spain, months of negotiations between the main unions UGT and CCOO and the H&M group broke down on June 19, leading to a series of strikes that began on June 20 and have now been extended to the first two Saturdays in July.
Mediation efforts would begin this week, Rodríguez Bonillo said.
80% of workers at H&M Group in Spain watched a 24-hour strike on Thursday that led to the closure of 100 stores, the unions said in a statement.
European services union UNI Europa said the strikes reflect a “problematic change in attitude at H&M” towards more precarious part-time contracts in larger stores that also take online orders.
“This step by management in Spain is not an isolated case. Even in the company’s home country of Sweden, workers are being pushed into the precarity of zero-hour contracts,” said Oliver Roethig, UNI Europa Regional Secretary.
H&M Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.