January arrived and, like every year, we received with enthusiasm the presentation of the accounts of the Rioja company Cartonajes Santorromán, not only for the benefits it presents, also for the comments with which it truffles an annual report that otherwise would have the same tone gray of the rest of the documents destined for the Commercial Registry. To the already traditional invectives against the “social-communist government” that does not let them live (in reality it does let them, based on the record of turnover and profits), this year has been joined by an allegation against labor legislation “aimed at proclaiming absurd rights, encourage laziness and defend bad workers, leaving companies defenseless against this type of abuse.” It is worth mentioning that the family that owns the company took advantage of the 2012 tax amnesty for undeclared benefits, accesses the public aid to which it is entitled and has not found space in its report to explain the work accident that took the life of one of its workers in 2023.
It goes without saying that Spain is home to competitive, innovative and creative entrepreneurs, but there are also magnificent examples of “entrepreneurs” (very numerous in sectors such as hospitality) who spend their lives complaining that Spaniards do not want to work and prefer to live subsidized by the state or being civil servants, which amounts to the same thing. Being an entrepreneur is not easy, but neither is the business culture that continues to predominate in some sectors of the Spanish economy. There are still many managers who justify the imposition of harsh (and illegal) working conditions because they fail to create efficient work systems or lack economic viability. They continue to use the number of hours worked as a yardstick to measure not only the professional worth, but also the moral category of the worker, as demonstrated by the recent debate on the reduction of working hours in Spain.
#Entrepreneurs #absurd #labor #rights
