Airbus Spain workers reject telework offer and begin indefinite strike
Airbus workers in Spain began an indefinite strike on Tuesday 25 August, after assemblies at five sites rejected the company’s mediated offer the previous day. Workers at Getafe (Madrid), San Pablo and Tablada (Seville), Illescas (Toledo) and Albacete voted the offer down across both morning and afternoon shifts on 24 August. The Cádiz assembly was deferred to 1 September. Pickets began at 05:30 on the Tuesday, with around 14,000 employees called out and the unions CGT, UGT and ÚTIL reporting participation of roughly 90%.
The rejected offer was tabled on 21 August through Spain’s SIMA mediation service and included a restoration of two telework days a week alongside existing individual arrangements, pay rises linked to inflation plus an increment intended to recover lost purchasing power, and the withdrawal of Airbus’s Supreme Court appeal over sick-pay supplements with deducted amounts refunded. Workers rejected it because the pay commitments carried no figures or dates, and because holidays, working-time flexibility, canteen and transport terms were left unresolved. The unions are seeking cumulative pay rises of 9% across 2026 and 2027. Talks resumed the same day under the daily calendar agreed at SIMA.
Why this matters
Airbus had already conceded the telework point. On 21 August it suspended its plan to require white-collar staff on-site four days a week from September, and the mediated offer put the two home-working days back on the table – yet the workforce still voted to strike. For remote and hybrid workers in Europe, that shows how home-working days now move through bargaining: they are traded inside a package covering pay, sick pay, holidays and transport, rather than settled on their own. If you work under a Spanish collective agreement, your telework days are a bargaining item with a price attached, and the negotiating position on pay will shape what happens to them.
Context
Spain regulates distance working through Ley 10/2021, which requires a written agreement covering the hours and conditions of remote work and makes changes to it a matter for agreement rather than unilateral instruction. That backdrop is part of why the four-day mandate met organised resistance. The direction elsewhere in Europe has generally been towards more office attendance – Norway’s DNB has ended fixed work-from-home days, and ABN AMRO in the Netherlands is bargaining for a 50% office-attendance floor through its collective labour agreement.
What to watch
The Cádiz vote on 1 September will show whether the rejection holds across every Spanish site. Airbus has warned that part of its Spanish workload is at risk if the strike does not end promptly. Watch whether any settlement fixes the two telework days in the collective agreement or leaves them as a management concession that can be revisited later.