Madrid, Nov 28 (EFE). – Inditex workers protested on Friday, coinciding with Black Friday sales, outside stores in Madrid, Barcelona, and other European cities to demand participation in the multinational’s profits.
In Spain, the demonstrations were called by the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) unions, a week before Inditex presents its Q3 results, in which it is expected to set another record.
The head of the Inditex group at UGT Madrid, Carolina Albarrán, explained to EFE that employees are demanding the distribution of profits for all because “it is fair and we deserve it as workers.”
”There are colleagues who have been preparing orders since 7 am, restocking the stores so that the company can make a profit, and that has to be compensated,” she added during a protest attended by some 200 people.
In Barcelona, around a hundred protesters carried flags of the organizing unions and chanted slogans such as “Inditex, understand, without us you don’t sell.”
The staff are seeking recognition for their efforts, a demand that has been repeated for years by unions in different countries at meetings of the European Works Council, but which “has always been rejected by Inditex,” Beatriz Aliaga, the CCOO coordinator for the group, told EFE.
Inditex, Spain’s largest listed company, earned 5.86 billion euros in the 2024 fiscal year, a 9% year-on-year increase, its third consecutive year of record results.
In addition to Madrid and Barcelona, rallies were also held in Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, France, Italy, and Germany, although all with very low attendance.
In Paris, around 20 workers gathered in front of a Zara store on one of the city’s busiest shopping streets, near the City Hall.
Another 20 protested in front of the Zara store in Rossio, in the heart of Lisbon, and one of the group’s largest.
A spokesperson for the workers, Cátia Carvalho, who works at the Zara store in Rossio, told EFE that the company makes profits that it does not share with its employees.
In Rome, less than a dozen employees joined the protest outside the Zara store on Via del Corso, one of the Spanish company’s most iconic stores abroad.
”We are also here in Belgium, after three days of intense and consecutive strikes. If the negotiations are not successful, we will obviously go further, and there will be more intense stoppages,” explained a union spokeswoman who has been working for Inditex in Brussels for 19 years, where dozens of workers have gathered. EFE
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