In the week of Pedro Sánchez’s appearance in Congress to report on the management of DANA, the resignation of Juan Lobato as general secretary of the PSOE of Madrid, the hangover from the voluntary declaration of Javier Aldama, commissioner of the Koldo plotin the National Court, and in the Federal Congress of the Socialists in Seville, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has fueled the political anger, yes, but not alone. The opposition leader started the week with UGT in Barcelona and closed it with company executives in A Coruña. And in both scenarios he vindicated social dialogue. Feijóo does not want to be left out of the debates and agreements on labor matters and listens to a sector of the party that asks him not to stop talking about the material issues that society is going through.
So, This Monday he became the first national president of the PP to participate in a confederal congress of the UGT union. A fact that he himself expressed in his speech. “It might seem that, for me, being at a UGT congress is playing away from home. I don’t conceive Spain like that,” he told them. He even joked that “the majority” of those present did not vote for him and that is why he could not be president of the Government or, as a consequence, sign any agreement with the union. Feijóo was comfortable in a forum for which his presence did not go unnoticed.
“It is true that you cannot yet sign agreements, but it would be good if, in the next half year, a vote in favor or an abstention with the reduction of the working day would not go badly for us,” the general secretary asked him in public. from UGT de Catalunya, Camil Ros. “Are you going to do the same thing in reducing the working day as with the labor reform?” said Yolanda Díaz, vice president and Minister of Labor of the Government.
More than a week ago, the Executive began the formal process to approve the draft law that includes the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours in 2025. After eleven months of negotiation, the Ministry of Labor closed it without agreement the social dialogue table with the unions and the employers, so that the representatives of the employers deviate from the norm. The PP, which put the four-day week on the table, which consisted of working the same hours but fewer days a week and more hours a day, has already announced that it will only support measures that generate consensus.
“I ask economic agents not to abandon the social dialogue tables and that these social dialogue tables make all the necessary efforts to focus on the productivity of our companies,” Feijóo said this Thursday at the CEDE executives’ congress in A Coruña. .
Feijóo pledged to support the pension reform
And following this logic that aligns him with the employers, Feijóo is willing to support the latest pension reform. This is what he revealed Pepe Alvarez this Monday: “I want to thank the PP for, beyond other issues, in relation to this matter it has committed to effectively supporting the latest pension agreement.”
Although the national leadership of the party does not want to confirm this point, union sources also confirm to Public that Feijóo guaranteed Álvarez and Unai Sordo in the meetings he had with both of them last October that if the text went to Congress the same as it had left the social dialogue table, he would “respect” it.
These meetings were another declaration of intentions from Feijóo towards the unions after the breakup of the regional governments with Vox. The passage of the extreme right – which has in its electoral program withdraw subsidies to unions and employers – through the regional executives weakened social dialogue and placed the PP in an uncomfortable position. So much so that the popular ones, now alone, did not take long to try to rebuild bridges.
The most obvious case is that of Castilla y León, where Vox drowned the Labor Relations Service (SERLA) bringing its financing to a minimum and where the Government of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco sought rapprochement with the representatives of workers and companies just eight days after the departure of the extreme right. In September, Mañueco and the social dialogue agents signed four agreements on housing, education, dependency and fair transition for which the Board will mobilize 980 million euros.
“Weighing on the PP”, as party sources acknowledge, is the fear that the image of the “managing party” that they want to project would be dragged along by Vox in their coalition governments. In the same way, They long to be a formation with “social” sensitivity. At this point, different PP leaders emphasize Feijóo’s special “obsession” with safeguarding that essence of a moderate right-wing leader that has been diluted in Madrid.
Social proposals
This is also why Genoa has given capital importance to its law on family conciliation and co-responsibility. A proposal that they have defined as the “most ambitious of democracy” in this area and that contains measures such as universal free schools from 0 to 3 years old – something that Feijóo already implemented in Galicia and that he carried in his program for the general elections. – and others related to maternity and paternity leave. The same party that appealed to the Constitutional Court in 2019 to extend paternity leave to equal maternity leave, now wants to increase it from 16 weeks to 20—something that Sumar also intends to promote within the Government—and eliminate the mandatory nature of the first six weeks simultaneous for mothers and fathers. Feijóo asked UGT to support the law to put pressure on the Government.
Vox, willing to grow at the expense of social discontent and capitalize on its departure from the regional governments, has already launched itself against the PP president’s winks towards the unions.
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