The Government has resumed negotiations with social agents on Monday for the reduction of the working day. The Ministry of Labor has offered employers, who are reluctant to reduce working hours, a support plan for small businesses and bonuses for those businesses with less than 10 employees that need to hire new workers to apply the 37.5 hours per week that the agreement between PSOE and Sumar promised for 2025.
“This roundtable has already made a lot of progress,” said the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, at the end of the meeting. “The Government is making a huge effort to adapt these measures to the reality” of the Spanish productive fabric, he argued. According to the ministry’s data, 90% of Spanish companies have less than 10 people on their payroll, which adds up to a total of 3.5 million jobs.
“We know that many workers, public employees, banking staff, many employees in the telecommunications sector and large companies already enjoy reduced working hours, but this is not enough,” claimed the Secretary of Employment, who has advocated “democratising time, which cannot be a privilege of some sectors”. In total, the measure would benefit some 13 million workers.
The new proposal from the Ministry of Labour to attract employers to the agreement involves offering bonuses to companies with fewer than 10 employees that need to hire new employees as a result of the reduction in working hours. For the moment, the only requirement would be that the contracts be permanent, but Pérez Rey has indicated that the Ministry remains open to contributions from social agents, especially from organisations representing SMEs and the self-employed at the table. “It is not a closed item,” he said.
In addition, the Government has offered a “support system for small businesses”. A ‘SME plan 37.5’ with which the Ministry wants to “guide, train and advise” through guidance and employment centres financed with European funds. “We are going to disseminate and carry out technical guides, mainly by sector, to be able to support this transition of small businesses”, explained Pérez Rey. Among the support measures for companies, advice on time recording is also included, another leg, along with digital disconnection, of the negotiation.
The ministry says that this measure will help to “create jobs, improve productivity and generate free time, from which these companies will benefit.” “Not all the time freed up by the reduction in working hours will go to new jobs,” acknowledged Yolanda Díaz’s number 2, because companies “will improve productivity.”
The president of the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (Cepyme), Gerardo Cuerva, had been particularly harsh in his tone against the Government. “It needs submissive interlocutors to carry out its assault on the company,” he said last July, when he accused the Executive of having a “broader strategy that challenges the free market model” and “that adopts communist theses.”
The Secretary of State has praised the “most constructive spirit” of the employers’ association at the social dialogue table this Monday. Although the ministry has not yet sent the complete document to the unions and employers, the latter have promised “to review and study it”. “I understand that this is with a view to reaching an agreement or establishing alternatives”, Pérez Rey stressed.
Trade unions continue their protests
The unions have been less optimistic, and will maintain the schedule of protests announced starting this month. “The employers continue to deny the objective,” lamented the confederal secretary of Studies and Trade Union Training of CCOO, Carlos Gutiérrez. “It shows a total lack of definition regarding the possibility of negotiating those measures that are being put on the table and that have the same objective, which is to incorporate the reduction of working hours and the negotiation,” he said.
The deputy secretary general for trade union policy at UGT, Fernando Luján, agreed that “all steps” are being taken to ensure that employers join this “request from Spanish society”, but he also focused on the political parties that must endorse the measure in Parliament. “They are the recipients of popular sovereignty and cannot be against those people they claim to represent”, he claimed. For this reason, the calendar of mobilisations will also include the message for political parties that “they must move”.
The coalition agreement between the PSOE and Sumar contemplated a reduction in the maximum weekly working day from the current 40 hours to 38.5 in 2024 and to 37.5 in 2025. The timetable for fulfilling the first part of the agreement is already very tight, although the Labour Party hopes to achieve this by reducing the proportional part in annual calculation this year for the “few months remaining in 2024”. “Sweating the shirt and not leaving the table until we reach an agreement deserves this slight delay”, Pérez Rey defended.
Source: www.eldiario.es
