From week to week, two nine-hour shifts (from 6:00 to 15:00 and from 15:00 to 00:00), and from morning to week, an additional eight hours in the morning. Last October the management of the company presented its intention to the unions and then they were against ELA (9), LAB (5) and ESK (4), which already have 18 of the 29 representatives of the committee.

“The workers wouldn’t rest long enough and there would be about 600 more people in the assembly line,” said ELA’s representative and chairman of the works council, Igor Guevara. “They don’t like either the signatories of the convention, or the company itself, because they know the impact and discontent they create on the workers,” said ESK, which signed the minority agreement by UGT (6), CCOO (4) and Ekintza (1). “Workers cannot be forced to work 53 hours during the working weeks of tomorrow and 45 hours in the afternoon. We are old workers, 35% of the workforce is older than 50 years, the only thing that involves applying these measures is lower and less productivity," said LAB.

Last week, the directorate has reported that it has decided to implement what it then submitted as a proposal to the Supreme Court. Asked about the feeling among the workers, Díaz de Alda explained to ARGIA that “nobody understands it”. On the one hand, “it would be very detrimental to health and conciliation to work in nine-hour working days,” he says. He pointed out that the company complained that the workers are suffering a lot of casualties, “for if this is done, there will be more.” On the other hand, he said that “there is not even a need for production”. The company itself plans to produce 124,000 vans for next year, the lowest number since the pandemic. In particular, and following the tradition of Mercedes, management has threatened to expel them if their conditions are not accepted. “There’s no one left,” Díaz de Alda said, arguing that there are ways to keep all jobs.

What will the workers and the unions do? The LAB representative says that the situation is still confusing. The trade unions have not yet met, and among them there are different views on the company’s proposal. Some believe that it violates the existing labour agreement and is therefore not going to be implemented. LAB is not so clear, “and if it were included in the convention, the protests would be illegal.” All this, at a time when the European car industry as a whole is in a deep crisis, and so is Mercedes. The German multinational announced in September that it has reduced its performance forecasts by 2024, according to the German company. In any case, at the moment, nobody has called into question the investment announced by companies and institutions for the Vitoria-Gasteiz plant, which aims to start the construction of a new model of electric vans in 2026.