The Government of the Generalitat has convened this Friday employers and unions to set up a commission to monitor the effects on the Catalan economy of the war in Ukraine. The president took part in the conclave Pere Aragonès and the Ministers of Economy, James Giroand Business and Work, Roger Torrent; as well as the top representatives of Work Promotion, Pimec, CCOO i UGT. At the meeting, the parties set up this body to analyze and study how energy prices are evolving, possible logistical and supply problems and how all this is already impacting and will impact the Catalan business fabric. The will of Aragonès has also been to establish a joint position with the social agents to bring it to the Conference of Presidents this weekend in The Palmwith unitary demands that have not yet been defined and on which the parties continue to work, according to sources present in the negotiation.
The commission will meet regularly – next week the parties will meet again – and in this space employers and unions will share proposals for action to anticipate economic problems and react to recent events. In recent days, social agents have been sounding the alarm about the consequences that the war conflict opened by the Russian invasion is already having on the Catalan economy. Pimec ciphered in 320,000 jobs in endangered SMEs due to the increase in the cost of the energy bill, Fomento raised the figure to 500,000 If large companies and unions join forces, they have been demanding measures to shield the purchasing power of families in the face of the increase, even before the war, in electricity and gas bills.
One of the measures that the power stations have put on the table has been to ask the central government to activate extraordinary funds for the RED mechanism of cyclical strikes, provided for in the event of an economic crisis. “There are enough reasons to do so,” said the general secretary of CCOO de Catalunya. Xavier Pacheco. “If necessary, activate them. We have to anticipate it, as we did with the covid crisis “, said the Deputy Secretary General of the UGT of Catalonia, Núria Solé. The union has also urged the government to speed up the process of taking in refugees and for the administration to strengthen the mechanisms for increasing the number of war victims that may arrive in the coming weeks and months.
For the business group, the President of Pimec has emphasized the need to strengthen the liquidity of companies so that they can cope with the increase in energy bills and the cost of raw materials, and has demanded that the Administration intercede to lower the price of said invoice. “Urgent measures are needed, we must prevent the production chains from being broken,” he said Antoni Canete.