Sumar received with satisfaction the package of measures against corruption announced by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on Wednesday in Congress. But its leaders believe that in order to sustain the legislature, the Executive must activate the most important measures of the investiture agreement signed both parties of the progressive coalition two years ago. And one of them is the remuneration of parental permits and the improvement of casualties due to paternity and maternity.
The Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, was claimed live to Sánchez in her speech during the appearance in Congress on the Santos Cerdán case. From the gallery, he took out an already written decree and asked him to approve it directly in the next Council of Ministers.
“We have told him to reset the legislature and I know we are going to do it. […] Also with the Royal Decree of the permits. We will expand the birth permit to 20 weeks. We will comply with the directive that requires the remuneration of at least four weeks. We are going to tell Spanish single -parent families that are entitled to 34 weeks as Spanish courts have already said. Next week, president, we will present this in the Council of Ministers. We expect the commitment of the votes of the Socialist Party to carry it forward, ”Díaz announced.
The Vice President’s party, Sumar Movement, had already pressed its governing partner at the beginning of the week to try to mobilize this measure that although it has paid perhaps less holders than the reduction of day can have a phenomenal impact for families and become a very important electoral letter for the government and for the whole of the political space today articulated around adding.
They are two types of permits. On the one hand there is the expansion of 20 weeks of the time that mothers and fathers can be taken for the birth of a child. In the investiture agreement, PSOE and Sumar included this measure and on the other hand the remuneration of at least a part of the parental eight -week care permits, that fathers and mothers can be taken during the first eight years from the birth of their son.
The Government approved via decree the last legislature the creation of those eight -week permits for care, but not their remuneration. That is why the commitment of the investiture agreement contemplated the remuneration of the first four weeks, something that the Executive must comply with the European Directive on Conciliation approved in 2019.
Spain in fact faces a fine of almost 10 million euros for not having paid that permit so far, according to the calculations of the Ministry of Labor. 9,760 euros per day, argue more graphically.
Until now, the socialist part of the Government had been carrying out the negotiation of this measure to the approval of general state budgets that, however, has been extending due to the lack of parliamentary support. The inclusion of the remuneration of permits was already one of the most thorny issues during the negotiation of the investiture agreement between PSOE and add in November 2023.
A negotiation from the last legislature
But the PSOE resistance to implement this measure comes from much further back. The Ministry of Social Rights during the last legislature, at the stage of the Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, already fought a hard fight to try that this permit for care, which was within the Law of Families, was paid. If not complete, yes at least one part, four weeks, as it now proposes. That law left the Council of Ministers in March 2023, almost at the end of the Legislature, but did not incorporate remuneration. Nor came to vote in Congress for the electoral advancement of that year, although the socialist part of the government accepted that the permit be approved of the project in a royal decree.
The problem that the eight weeks are not paid, according to the criticisms of the unions, is that it introduces to that right an important gender bias that causes them to end up asking above all women and those care tasks are only in their hands.
The main argument of the PSOE in all these years of negotiations has been the huge volume of money that would be for public coffers. That is why they expected a budget negotiation to address the issue. But after Sánchez’s turn in foreign policy to carry the budget in defense to 2.1% of GDP, on the left the excuse of the Socialists on the high cost of the measure begins to irritate. Even more when the State is already paying huge amounts for a fine to the European Union for not implementing the measure.
For all these reasons, the parties of adding and especially the Ministries of Labor and Social Rights, with Pablo Bustinduy in front, have raised the pressure in recent weeks. If there has to be a “reset” of the legislature, as Diaz asked after meeting with Sanchez a few weeks ago, he must go through the approval of measures such as this, which reach a large sector of the population and transcend the leftist electorate. In the coalition they estimate that this policy reaches about seven million parents.
“It is one of the main social measures collected in the Government Agreement and that was not complying. We will ensure that families have this measure approved before classes begin again,” sources of Sumar movement transfer.
Add wants to approve the decree this month
Although Díaz advanced from the tribune his intention that these permits go directly to the Council of Ministers next week, to reach that step, due to its budgetary relevance, the measure has to go through several bodies within the Government, the Government Delegate Commission for Economic Affairs (CDGAE) and the so -called CG6, the General Commission of State Secretaries and Undersecretaries, before its final approval.
The idea they handle in the ministries of Díaz and Bustinduy, who will sign the text jointly, is that the decree is approved in the Council of Ministers before the summer break of August, so that Congress can validate it already on the way back, in one of the ordinary plenary sessions of September.
In order for the decree to leave the government, the ministers of adding have to first convince the socialist part, and above all to the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, who in the full arched the eyebrows while Díaz warned that they would take the measure soon.
“If they refuse they will have to explain it,” they move in the coalition, which seek with this measure to close the course with recovered morals. This will be an important negotiation, but not the only one. In the last plenary of the month, 22, if there are no changes, Congress will discuss the amendments to the totality presented by PP, Vox and Junts to the law for the reduction of the working day. Adsar has, therefore, less than ten days to convince Carles Puigdemont to remove the amendment or vote against.
At the moment, the conversations have not produced too many advances. If those of Yolanda Díaz get both victories, they can leave quiet on vacation after a course that has been very hard for the government and also for the plurinational space.
Source: www.eldiario.es
