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17 June, 2026More than 9,000 Iberdrola workers across Spain are set to strike on 19 June, as collective bargaining talks that started in January 2025 remain deadlocked after sixteen months. IndustriALL affiliates UGT and CCOO say the energy company is refusing to protect workers' purchasing power despite posting record profits.
It is the second general strike at Iberdrola in just over a year. The first took place on 6 June 2025, when over 9,000 workers walked out in the company’s first ever strike.
Sixteen months, no progress
Negotiations on a new collective agreement began in January 2025. Sixteen months on, UGT and CCOO say talks are exactly where they started, with the company unwilling to move on wage increases, restoring purchasing power, or working conditions.
Since 2021, the unions say, Iberdrola staff in Spain have lost 19 per cent of their purchasing power as wages rose only 2.8 per cent against far higher inflation. The unions describe the company’s pay offer as “a disgrace” for a company that calls itself a global energy leader. ELA and CIG are calling for a strike in the regions where they have presence, supporting the national strike.
Record profits, frozen wages
Iberdrola reported net profit of €6.285 billion in 2025. Since the current collective agreement took effect in 2021, net profit has risen 12 per cent, accumulating €24.924 billion in total profit over that period. The company’s market capitalization has reached close to €135 billion. Iberdrola, which describes itself as Europe’s leading electricity company by market value, is set to distribute more than €4.5 billion to shareholders for 2025.
Over the same period, the company’s executive chairman, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, increased his own remuneration by 6.45 per cent, to €14.11 million.
The unions say Spain accounts for 23 per cent of Iberdrola’s global workforce but contributed 46 per cent of its net profit in 2025, while the company’s own publicity about average pay of more than €88,000 per worker bears little resemblance to what staff actually take home.
A pattern of disputes
The unions point to repeated rulings against Iberdrola at Spain’s National High Court (Audiencia Nacional) in the past two years, including over an illegal two-tier pay scale, unlawful use of electronic voting in union elections, and a failure to uprate pension risk benefits in line with inflation.
UGT and CCOO representatives also maintained a five-day, round-the-clock protest outside Iberdrola’s Bilbao headquarters ahead of the company’s general shareholders’ meeting earlier this year.
The strike falls during the week Iberdrola is marking its 125th anniversary, tracing its origins to the founding of Hidroeléctrica Ibérica in Bilbao in 1901.
Just Transition, but not for workers
Iberdrola has positioned itself globally as a leader in delivering what it calls a Just Transition to clean energy, pointing to its coal plant closures and renewables investment as evidence of putting workers at the centre of the shift. UGT and CCOO argue that commitment looks different from the inside, accusing the company of doing exactly what unions have warned against for years: record profits and dividends at the top, frozen purchasing power on the shop floor.
“We stand with our Spanish affiliates as they take strike action for the second time in a year. Sixteen months of stalling is not negotiation, it is a refusal to engage. A company breaking its own profit records every year can afford to protect its workers’ purchasing power. A transition, whether that is closing a coal plant or restructuring an industry, is only “just” if it protects the jobs, pay and conditions of the workers it affects,”
said Atle Høie, IndustriALL general secretary.