UGT Bank Unions Mais, SBN and SBC Rebuff the Sector's 2% 2026 Wage Offer as 'Insensibilidade e Ganância' Against a Big-Five €1.279 Billion Q1 Profit Tape — Twenty Signatories Sit at the Negotiating Table, CGD and BCP Outside
UGT bank unions Mais, SBN and SBC rejected the sector's 2% 2026 wage offer on 23 May as 'insensibilidade e ganância' set against the big-five banks' €1.279 billion Q1 profit tape and 3.3% April inflation — leaving the ~20 ACT signatories without a deal and CGD and BCP outside the agreement.
The three UGT-affiliated banking unions — Sindicato dos Bancários do Norte (SBN), Sindicato dos Bancários do Centro (SBC) and the Sindicato Mais — issued a joint Saturday-morning communiqué rejecting the 2026 wage proposal tabled by Portugal's banking sector, branding the offer of just 2% across the collective labour agreement "insensibilidade e ganância." The unions' language carried the formal warning that without movement, "they will have to resort to other mechanisms to guarantee wage and pension improvements" — the closest the negotiating table has come to a strike call this cycle.
The Numbers on the Page
- Sector wage offer 2026: 2.0% (down from the 2.5% settled in 2025)
- April inflation: 3.3% year-on-year on the INE tape
- Big-five Q1 2026 profit: €1.279 billion combined, +4.9% YoY
- Signatories to the ACT: ~20 banks, including Santander Totta, Novo Banco and BPI
- Outside the agreement: Caixa Geral de Depósitos and BCP, which negotiate their own house terms
The 2% offer sits 1.3 percentage points below the April CPI reading, which means a straight real-wage cut for the roughly 30,000 bankários covered by the sector ACT. The unions cited the €1.279 billion big-five Q1 profit tape as the central counterpoint: a 4.9% earnings increase at the headline level, against a 2% wage anchor for staff.
What CGD and BCP Outside the ACT Changes
Roughly two-thirds of Portugal's banking workforce sits under the sector collective agreement. The remainder — most importantly Caixa Geral de Depósitos and BCP — negotiate house-level acordos that historically track the ACT outcome with a small premium. The negotiating perimeter is therefore narrower than the headline implies, but sector-wide wage pressure spills across the line into the bigger employers within a quarter or two.
The banks' counter is the familiar mix: ECB rate cuts compressing net interest income into 2027, capital-ratio buffers under the new Basel calibration, and the cost overhang from the one-billion-euro early-retirement programmes the sector has run for three years to drive headcount down.
What This Means for Expats
- Branch service quality: A protracted dispute typically lengthens NIF onboarding and document review queues at branches during peak summer expat-arrival weeks. Plan ahead if you need in-person account opening.
- Mortgage pricing: Banks under wage pressure rarely cut variable-rate spreads aggressively. Anyone refinancing into the back half of 2026 should expect the spread floor to stay sticky.
- Sector employment: Banking remains one of the higher-paid private-sector tracks for bilingual hires in Lisbon and Porto. A 2% settlement reshapes the salary baseline new hires negotiate into.
- Deposit pricing: Wage settlement timing has historically correlated with the launch (and withdrawal) of time-deposit campaigns. Watch the post-settlement window for the next rate move.
- Pensions clause: The unions' reference to "pension improvements" matters because the bank-sector ACT covers a sizeable defined-benefit footprint that interacts with the public pension cycle.
Negotiations remain formally open, but the unions' language suggests no further rounds without a substantively new number on the table. Expect the first concrete escalation date — whether a one-day stoppage or an enlarged plenary — before mid-June. The wider question is whether Caixa Geral de Depósitos and BCP, the two banks outside the ACT, signal early on whether they will track or break from a low sector settlement.
