The second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, and the head of the Economy, Carlos Body, still have not agreed on a schedule for the implementation of the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours per week. This Monday, Corps and Díaz met at the headquarters of the Ministry of Labor to try to unblock the implementation of this measure. And although that meeting served to reduce the tensions of recent weeks, the meeting ended without agreementalthough some “progress” was made, according to sources familiar with the content of the meeting, who nevertheless refuse to offer any details so as not to compromise the progress of the negotiation.
After the meeting, Economy and Labor limited themselves to issuing separate statements in which, basically, They only confirmed that PSOE and Sumar will continue negotiating. Both wings of the Government “are committed to continuing negotiations to urgently process the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours in 2025,” stated the ministry led by Yolanda Díaz, while that of Carlos Body assured that the reduction in the working day “it is a priority and a commitment of the Government” and that both departments will “continue working to make it an effective reality as soon as possible and with all the guarantees”
Those few lines, however, make it clear that the positions of Labor and Economy are still distant. Basically, the differences between the two wings of the Executive are calendar-related, but not only. Díaz and his followers remember that the Government pact signed by PSOE and Sumar establishes that the reduction of the working day to 37 and a half hours must come into force in 2025, and they assure that, in order not to exceed this year, the processing must begin now. and it must also be executed urgently, since, subsequently, the law will have to be negotiated in Congress with the Government’s parliamentary allies. Body, on the contrary, opens the door for the Executive to alter the pact it has already signed with the unions, and on Sunday assured that a margin of flexibility must be given to small and medium-sized companies (the vast majority in Spain ) to apply the measure.
The meeting between Díaz and Corpus took place at the request of the vice president just one day after the Minister of Economy assured in an interview that he is not “holding back” the processing of “any text” and that the two of them are the people who should resolve the differences between PSOE and Sumar regarding the reduction of working hours, without resorting to the final decision of President Pedro Sánchez. “It is up to us to be able to propose an option with which we are all comfortable to pass it through the Council of Ministers, we still have a way to talk and to advance in this discussion without having to resort to that arbitration of the President of the Government” Body said.
Although sources familiar with the content of the meeting affirm that positions have begun to move, This Monday, Sumar maintained the pressure that he has been exerting on the PSOE for days. Vice President Díaz, hours before the meeting, insisted that “the social dialogue agreements in our country must be fulfilled” without making changes, as proposed by the Economy, while the Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey, denounced that Corps “It would exceed its powers, which are not labor ones” if it decided to delay the reduction of working hours beyond 2025.
For its part, the PSOE, in general, and the Minister of Economy, in particular, tried not to divert the focus from the measures to facilitate access to housing that Pedro Sánchez presented this Monday. The socialist wing of the Government is trying to exclude the president from the dispute between Labor and the Economy in relation to the working day, and Sumar, for the moment, has avoided charging against him and has focused his criticism on Corps. But in the formation they do not rule out that, if the socialists continue in their thirteenth, the confrontation could escalate to the figure of the presidentwhich ultimately is the one who decides the positions defended by the PSOE within the Executive.
It would not be the first time that something like this has happened, since, throughout her five years as Minister of Labor, Díaz has had several confrontations with the Ministry of Economy. This one with Carlos Cuerpo is the first, but with her predecessor, Nadia Calviño, the leader of Sumar clashed repeatedly over issues such as the minimum wage or labor reform. Precisely this reform, the star measure of Labor last term, led to the greatest conflict between Díaz and Calviño: the now leader of Sumar accused the socialist leader of wanting to remove her from the negotiation to weaken the changes in the labor market, and after several weeks of brawl The matter ended up being resolved in a meeting between Díaz and Sánchez.
Díaz plays it
For the vice president, the result of this negotiation is key, and not only because of the content of the measure. Sources from the Sumar coalition suspect that the sudden change of strategy with respect to the socialists, whom Díaz has been openly criticizing for weeks despite having built his public image on the idea of not making “noise”, does not respond only to the need to reduce the working day, and they consider that The vice president is trying to gain her own profile in the face of Sumar’s increasingly reduced space within the Government.
For Díaz, as leader of a space that has chained electoral failure after electoral failure in the last year, twisting the arm of the PSOE in relation to the working day It would be a very important goal with which to justify Sumar’s role. in the Executive during this legislature, and could even serve as a turning point to change the trend of polls that have been declining for many months. The opposite, however, would leave the vice president’s leadership in an immensely precarious situation.
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