The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, has accelerated political contacts in recent days with the investiture partner parties and has summoned all of them in person at the Ministry of Labor to try to save the social pact reached at Christmas with employers and unions on labor reform. The objective pursued is that the new project be validated in Congress in a plenary session to be held on February 3. There are 16 days left for that session and the Government has not yet assured the approval of that project, something more than a symbol for the Executive of the coalition between the PSOE and United We Can to end the labor model imposed by the absolute majority of the PP in 2012 .
The last direct and telephone contacts have been maintained and turned to the PNV and ERC, the two main allies of the legislature and to whom Díaz wants to prioritize to avoid the alternative plan that the socialist sector of the Government manages to resolve this critical situation by turning the search of support for Ciudadanos (nine seats) and with the essential contribution of a miscellany of up to seven small groups with contradictory ideological positions.
The calendar is tightening and the vice president also announced this Tuesday on her Twitter account that she had been infected with covid with mild symptoms and that therefore she had to postpone her “public agenda planned for the next few days” although she planned to continue working from the lockdown.
After taking a test today I have tested positive for COVID-19. I feel fine, with mild symptoms.
I will postpone my scheduled public agenda for the next few days and continue working from confinement.
Take care of yourselves 💜
– Yolanda Diaz (@Yolanda_Diaz_) January 18, 2022
The key to this negotiation in extremis and several bands, with the vigilance of not wanting to scare away the agreement closed by the Government with the CEOE employers and the CCOO and UGT unions, is now, however, outside the labor reform project. What Labor is discussing these days with the PNV and ERC, mainly, is the possibility of better outlining the wording of two points of an article of the current Workers’ Statute (84.3 and 84.4) that could give the option of interpreting that in case of conflict state agreements prevail over autonomous ones.
The current wording is not clear. In the aforementioned article 84.3 of these Statutes it is specified that “unless otherwise agreed negotiated according to article 83.2, unions and business associations that meet the legitimacy requirements of articles 87 and 88 may, within the scope of an autonomous community, negotiate agreements or conventions that affect the provisions of those at the state level, provided that said decision obtains the support of the majorities required to constitute the negotiating commission in the corresponding negotiation unit”. And article 84.4 adds that “unless a different regime established by agreement or collective agreement at state level negotiated according to article 83.2 is applicable, the trial period, the modalities of hiring, professional classification, the maximum annual working day, the disciplinary regime, the minimum standards in terms of occupational risk prevention and geographical mobility. Both PNV and EH Bildu have warned their interlocutors in Labor that this demand is non-negotiable, pressured as they are in Euskadi by the power of the Basque unions and especially by the influence of ELA-Lab in the environment of the nationalist left. Those unions and others have called demonstrations against the reform on January 30.
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The second vice president and her team at Labor have listened these days to “the concerns and proposals” of their investiture partners, including above all the PNV’s approach to improve that wording of the Workers’ Statute so that it is less equivocal than in the case of that an autonomous agreement offers better conditions, will prevail over the state one.
But for now in the Ministry of Labor they only advance that they are willing to dialogue with all their investiture partners but without revealing their final position yet, according to official sources. They also admit that these possible adjustments have not yet been transmitted to social agents, employers and unions, because they are not closed, although they do recognize that these interlocutors “know the difficulties of seeking support in the parliamentary process” and are also being used in that sense. .
Government sources also explain, regarding this key demand, that “it is not so much ideological, from the left or right, as it is territorial.” And they add that the prevalence of regional agreements over state agreements is not something that exactly pleases unions like the UGT and CC OO.
That claim, precisely, is what the right-wing opposition in Parliament has targeted because they interpret it as a clear transfer to the nationalist partners. PP and Vox have long since announced that they are not willing to lend themselves to endorsing a reform that they understand as “bad for Spain”. The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, has even ignored the pressure of some more moderate leaders and members of the employers’ association who asked him for more caution and argued that the new project barely changes some points of the popular law of 2012, promoted then by the Minister of Labor, Fátima Báñez, now in the direct environment of the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi. In the leadership of the PP and Vox they refuse to adhere to that theory that they accuse the employers of supporting the new text as “a lesser evil” against proposals that they feared more radical.
In Ciudadanos, as their national spokesman, Edmundo Bal, emphasized again on Tuesday, they are now more open to talking and are even asking the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, to call them now, but that is to fully revalidate and “without touching a eat” the pact closed with the bosses and the unions. Cs wants to take advantage of this occasion, in the middle of the pre-campaign of the elections on 13-F in Castilla y León that give them such bad forecasts, to show off their “sense of responsibility and of State” with the other right-wing formations, but always that the Executive does not give in “against the independentistas who want to cut up Spain”, as Bal riveted this Tuesday.
Labor does not want to neglect the dialogue with ERC either, which has also joined the Basque parties’ claim to prioritize regional agreements, but which has its own demands. ERC does not support in Catalonia the pressure of such a powerful regional union, because in that territory CCOO and UGT predominate, which have signed the social agreement, but it does have to deal with its own peculiarities of leadership.
Junqueras Priorities
The president of the ERC, Oriol Junqueras, set in this sense on Monday night on Onda Cero the red lines that make his support now impossible. Junqueras specified some priorities for ERC that should contain the labor reform that government sources qualify and radically deny. The Republican leader spoke in this way about the processing wages and in the Executive they specify that this issue that affects temporary workers when they are fired was already excluded in 2001 when José María Aznar was president and they defend that now there would be other protection formulas in the document agreed.
Junqueras required more labor inspections and in the Government they clarify that this competence has been transferred years ago to the Generalitat, which is autonomous to increase these services. The independence leader added his interest in tackling bias and in the government coalition they join that objective but point out that this improvement is not among the components to change in the labor market and that it will be addressed in another law, that of uses and working hours .
“The father of fetish reform”
There are barely 16 days left for the vote in the plenary session of Congress on the great labor reform promised since the government agreement signed two years ago by the PSOE and United We Can. The result of next February 3 is far from clear. But that does not prevent a silent race of contacts, talks, negotiations and calls between various members of the Executive with the other political parties to probe the situation, add support and score a point if the initiative is successful in the end. “The reform of the labor reform of the PP is the great fetish, now everyone wants to be the father and mother of the project,” argues government sources involved in the negotiation.
The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, defended her leadership in this complex and transversal negotiation against the attempts of the president himself, Pedro Sánchez, to balance that balance a bit with the interference of the first vice president, Nadia Calviño. The Minister of the Presidency and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, also announced that he would open a round of contacts with all the parties and it was understood that he was drawing an alternative plan there to seek the vote of the nine Citizens deputies in case Díaz’s preferences with the investiture partners (ERC, PNV and EH Bildu) they failed. Sources from the socialist sector of the Government assure EL PAÍS that this path to be explored by Bolaños has already begun discreetly, something that the Podemos side in the Executive denies. The spokesman for Cs in Congress, Edmundo Bal, ratified yesterday that Bolaños has not yet called him, although he urged that this contact be formalized as soon as possible.
In Díaz’s environment they specify that it is the vice president who is leading these negotiations with all the partners and also that she does not want to convene Ciudadanos, because she considers that formation incompatible with the other allies and because they calculate that her nine seats would not be enough to overcome the vote if ERC, PNV and Bildu vote against and do not abstain.
If ERC, PNV and Bildu joined the no block with PP, Vox, Junts, CUP, BNG and Foro Asturias would reach 172 negative votes. If PSOE and United We Can add to their 154 deputies those from Cs, Canarian Coalition, Nueva Canaria, PDeCAT, Teruel Exists, the Regionalist Party of Cantabria, Más País and Compromís they would reach 174. The two from Unión del Pueblo Navarro are not for him either. rejection. The forces would be very even.
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