The Ministry of Labor once again clashes with the Ministry of Economy, after a multitude of previous disagreements. Now, the dispute affects the reduction of the working day, a star measure of the coalition government and specifically, of Sumar. The conflict centers on the intention of the Economy to delay the entry into force of the measure, according to negotiation sources. This Tuesday, the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, insisted several times in the press conference after the Council of Ministers in a message: “The Government agreement will be fulfilled.” This indicates 2025 as the limit of application of the measure.
The points of friction between both ministries are mainly two. The main one: the date of application of the reduction in working hours. Although there is also a second element of clash between the Ministries, one from Sumar and another from the PSOE, which points to how the reduction in the working day affects part-time contracts. In Economy, Labor’s claim that the reduction of maximum hours implies a salary increase for people hired part-time is not convincing, these sources indicate.
These differences were exposed in a meeting that took place this Monday between Vice President Yolanda Díaz and the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, as elDiario.es has learned. In Economy they refuse to assess possible differences between both Ministries and insist that they have always had a “very constructive position” and “rowing in favor” of reducing working hours. In Labor they refer to the statements of Yolanda Díaz at the press conference this Tuesday.
Although officially the Government’s position is one, that of the agreement that will be closed in the coming days with the unions and that will be transferred to the Council of Ministers in the form of a draft law, the internal clash has significance for the parliamentary negotiation. of the legislation and to what is finally approved in Parliament.
The fight of 2025
Vice President Yolanda Díaz insisted this Tuesday that the coalition government’s pact includes the commitment to apply the 37 and a half hours before “December 31, 2025.” Verbatim, the Government agreement committed to reducing “the maximum legal working day without salary reduction to establish it at 37 and a half hours per week. Its application will occur progressively, reducing to 38.5 hours in 2024 and culminating in 2025.”
Díaz highlighted in the press conference after the Council of Ministers that, in reality, there is already “a delay of one year” in what was agreed. The intermediate step of 38 and a half hours in 2024 has been sacrificed in the attempt to reach a tripartite agreement in social dialogue, which has finally not been possible due to the businessmen’s withdrawal after eleven months of talks.
The first alarms about the entry into force of the norm went off a few weeks ago, when the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, asked the businessmen at the UGT Confederal Congress to sit down to negotiate this matter, once Labor had already given the conversations with the employers have ended. In that speech, Sánchez hoped that “in this legislature” it would be possible to “have this law to reduce working hours in place.”
In Economy, they propose that the application be delayed beyond 2025, for example in the cases of collective agreements already signed, until the end of their validity, as the employers claimed, negotiation sources indicate. This could delay the reduction of working hours for several more years, something that Labor resists.
The unions are aware that, given the Government’s difficulty in finding support in Congress, the parliamentary procedure may give rise to cessions in the text agreed with the Executive. “It is evident that there would be a margin in the application time of 37 and a half hours,” said Pepe Álvarez, leader of UGT, in a recent interview with this medium.
Part-time work and increased wages
On the other hand, the clash over part-time contracts points to an economic issue. Labor intends to agree with the unions that the cut in maximum hours implies an increase in the remuneration of part-time workers, the vast majority of whom are women.
The logic, as explained in this CCOO study, is that if the full day becomes less than the current maximum of 40 hours per week, part-time workers who are governed by this maximum will be working a greater percentage of this full time. and they should start charging more. According to negotiation sources, this point is not convincing in Economy.
In the press conference after the Council of Ministers Yolanda Díaz also reiterated another idea: that Spain had been condemned on several occasions by the European Justice for discriminating against part-time workers. Something that has happened on several occasions in the past, for example with regard to pensions.
“We have been condemned several times for this measure, it is classified by the CJEU as indirect discrimination and I am sure that the Government of Spain will comply with this. Because the opposite would be for the Government of Spain to once again tell the women of this country, those who work part-time, that they are going to be penalized by the reduction of working hours in our country,” said Díaz. at the press conference.
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