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The Spanish Parliament approved the reform by a single ‘yes’ difference, after a conservative deputy voted in favor, although he assures that it was due to a “computer error”. A controversy is opened about whether or not the legislator will be able to repeat his vote. The reform, a key promise of Pedro Sánchez and a demand from Brussels to disburse community funds for economic reactivation, aims to balance the balance between employers and workers and reduce temporary contractual terms.
It is a labor reform considered by many to be historic, but its recent approval is unusual.
The first bill with major consensual changes in the country on this matter -since 1980- was approved on Thursday, February 3 by a margin of only one vote that, according to the opposition, came from one of its members by mistake.
The legislation was endorsed with the narrow result of 175 votes in favor against 174 against.
The head of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and promoter of the measure, went from concern to joy in a matter of seconds, when the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, affirmed that the decree had been approved.
Spain has a new labor relations framework that places the dignity of work at the center. With the labor reform we recover rights and rebuild consensus to advance in quality employment. Thanks to the groups that have supported this great country agreement. pic.twitter.com/vyuhVhqjWW
– Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) February 3, 2022
The confusion centered on the fact that deputy Alberto Casero, of the Popular Party (PP), a bench that reliably opposes the new norm, allegedly voted in favor of the measure by mistake.
Casero, who paid electronically from his home because he was convalescing, assures that he voted for the ‘no’ to the reform, but that a ‘yes’ appeared on the screen.
His political movement maintains that he notified the president of Congress that a “computer error” had occurred before the face-to-face voting began.
For his part, Batet denies having addressed any complaints at that time or changed the result. Subsequently, Congress also reported that it verified that there was no computer error.
The vote unleashed chaos in the Legislative. An exact case to the one registered in this vote has not been previously presented, so the process to be followed is not clear and the struggle between the political factions has once again gained strength.
It is not known if the legislator will be able to repeat his vote and the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, calls what happened a “fraud” and threatens to refute the legislation before the Constitutional Court, if he does not obtain a favorable response in the Congress Table, which he will turn to soon.
What does the labor reform promoted by Sánchez consist of?
Mainly, the new legislation would give unions more power in negotiating contracts and reduce the number of Spanish workers with temporary contracts.
The Executive of the Government assures that the reform would counteract the problem of unemployment in the country.
In November 2021, the unemployment rate in the Spanish territory was 14.1%, compared to the average of 7.2% for the 19 eurozone countries.
“This is the most important law of the legislature,” Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz assured Parliament before the vote.
#Live | Lastra says that thanks to the approval of the labor reform, Spain “is a fairer country than yesterday”: “For years the right tried to make us believe that we had to choose between having a job or having rights” pic.twitter.com/6ZbOnbP4uY
— Europe Press (@europapress) February 4, 2022
It is also a key promise of Pedro Sánchez, of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSO), but for which he has not obtained support from some legislators of his own government coalition and has had to make alliances with nine smaller parties. and its junior coalition partner, United We Can, to seek his approval.
The approval of this law meets a condition for the aid of the recovery fund for Covid-19, arranged by the European Union (EU). Brussels required parliamentary approval of the regulations to receive up to 12,000 million euros of community funds in the first half of this year.
In March 2021, the EU demanded a comprehensive labor reform from Madrid to tackle the “duality of the labor market” and mitigate the high rates of youth unemployment.
The reform promoted by Sánchez also revokes many of the changes of the previous one, approved by the PP in 2012 and which Díaz has referred to as a “disastrous model of precariousness”. With these regulations, temporary contracts became commonplace in Spain, the country with the most contracts of this type within the European Union.
The 2012 reform was implemented in the midst of the economic crisis that began in 2008 and at a time when the unemployment rate in the country reached 27%, reduced to 14% in November, however, it did so at the cost of high job instability.
With EFE and local media