Díaz proposes different compensation for dismissal depending on the circumstances of the worker

Despite the fact that little more than ten months have passed since the labor reform came into force, the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, is not satisfied with the changes brought about in the labor market and, more specifically, in the field of dismissal , which has not been addressed. Thus, the Minister of Labor revealed this Wednesday that another of her challenges is to address a comprehensive reform of dismissal that involves reformulating the causes and establishing different compensation depending on the circumstances of the worker.

“The dismissal has never been addressed in Spain, it has not been worked in depth, it has only operated with days of compensation, making dismissal cheaper, but this is not about that,” Díaz explained during a meeting on labor reform and the future of employment organized by the Association of Economic Information Journalists (APIE).

The approach that the vice president wants to take to the social dialogue table that addresses the 21st century Labor Statute is to move towards a different treatment of the causes and move towards what she has called “reparative or restorative dismissal”, which she specified will have a different compensation based on the “impact” that the dismissal may have on people, an approach that is advancing at a European level.

Despite the fact that the minister assured that it will be the “dialogue” that decides what factors will be taken into account to calculate the compensation, she did drop that they will be elements such as age, education, gender or even the type of home (it is not the same if the worker has a family or if he does not). More specifically, she gave the example that if the dismissed worker is a young man with a lot of training, he “probably does not need the same compensation” as another who is older and has little training.

«Reparative dismissal must be different. This is what Spain does not do and what is considered in Europe”, pointed out the Galician deputy, who made a strong point that the problem is not compensation, which is the only thing that has been touched on operating compensation days, but that the problem is in the “restriction of the causes”, that is, in limiting them more so that they cannot be fired so freely and at a cheap cost.

In any case, Díaz acknowledged that it could be that he did not have time to resolve this issue in the remainder of the legislature, seeing that negotiations with social agents are usually delayed, in view of the fact that the labor reform and the Scholarship Statute they have lasted what a labor: nine months, and the Labor Statute of the XXI Century has not yet begun.

New increase in the minimum wage

What does have to be closed before the end of the year is the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI) for 2023. The second vice president did not want to talk about specific figures and assured that she “never” goes to the table with an amount and neither does it going to do now. «The Minister of Labor is the one who speaks the least. I speak little and let others speak », she specified. However, she did give clues as to where the rise could be. Thus, he cited up to three times the vice president of the ECB, the former Minister of Economy of the PP Luis de Guindos, who revealed that in a tripartite meeting they held he asked to raise wages by 5% in Europe, something that “is not accidental”, but that he does so because he knows that “the risk of default is absolutely real”.

What he did assure is that the SMI will not be decided by the commission of experts that it has commissioned to update the recommendations they made with more current data, but “the social dialogue table”, which will be convened in December; that is to say, that he left the ball in the court of the unions and the bosses. Likewise, he made it clear that she prefers a more moderate increase in the minimum wage if it is with an agreement, than to stand at 1,100 euros as the unions defend with the rejection of the CEOE. “If I am able to reach an agreement, I prefer the guarantee of legitimacy of that agreement, the message that we send to society in a moment of uncertainty.”