The president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, defends in an article that he published on LinkedIn that the imposition, by law, of reducing the working day to 37.5 hours per week agreed by the Ministry of Labor with CCOO and UGT without the consensus of the employers “threatens break the balance in collective agreements, ignoring sectoral and territorial advances that have allowed working hours to be reduced in a consensual manner.”
In fact, the business leader alleges, almost one in four agreements, 24.78%, have already agreed to 37.5-hour days in 2024, “without the need for an imposition.”
The president of the CEOE expresses in this article his worry for one measure, that of reducing the working day, which has operational implications for companies and “invades the powers of social dialogue, the basis of stability and social peace in Spain.”
«Social dialogue is the country’s largest infrastructure and the main guarantor of social peace in the last 40 years. However, the unilateral imposition of changes in the working day violates the constitutional right to collective bargaining, denaturalizing this fundamental mechanism of consensus,” he denounces Garamendi.
In this sense, the president of the CEOE warns that announcements such as the reduction of working hours slow down the development of collective bargaining, as demonstrated, in his opinion, by the fact that in 2024 only 757 agreementscompared to 1,041 in 2023.
“The measure ignores the commitments and uses social dialogue as a political tool,” criticizes the business leader, who also remembers that just a year and a few months ago CEOE signed an agreement with the unions, the AENC, in which the recommendations were defined. regarding collective bargaining for companies and workers in 2023, 2024 and 2025. The 37.5 hours were not included in this agreement.
“It puts the viability of SMEs at risk”
Garamendi It also alleges that the reduction in working hours affects labor-intensive sectors, such as agriculture, hospitality or commerce, and “puts at risk” the viability of small and medium-sized companies, which represent “the heart” of the Spanish economy.
Thus, he insists that a “uniform” working day model cannot be applied that does not consider the diversity of needs and realities of the different sectors.
At the same time, the leader of the employers’ association once again defends that the Ministry of Labor’s premise that reducing working hours increases productivity “lacks empirical support.”
«Studies show that it is the increased productivity which facilitates reductions in work time. In a context in which Spain already has low levels of productivity, imposing this measure will aggravate organizational imbalances and labor costs,” he warns.
It also warns Garamendi that the legal imposition of reducing the working day to 37.5 hours “endangers” the competitiveness of the companies. “Any change in the working day must be agreed upon and adjusted to productive realities,” he reiterates in the article.
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