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European Commissioner Olli Rehn provoked Spain's unions, employer groups and political parties with a blog piece he published. In the blog, Rehn appeared to give his support to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) model which would see Spain slashing wages by 10% to trigger economic growth and tackle unemployment. Later on an EC official said these prescriptive measures were already contained in the EC’s country-specific recommendations, adding that these had been accepted by Spain. That document advises to bring the budget deficit below 3% of GDP by 2016 through ‘expenditure restraint’ and ‘revenue-increasing’ measures. The trade unions said Rehn's statements were completely unacceptable both because the IMF proposal wouldn't help the country emerge from the crisis and for the suffering the plan would cause.
English: http://www.thelocal.es/20130809/eu-backs-officials-spain-wage-cut-comments
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.