“We have won a battle, but the Spanish employers’ association is not alone. She has political groups that are at her side or behind her, that accompany her, that are at her service.” Yolanda Díaz launched this message this Friday to consider resolved the clash within the Government over the reduction of the working day and to somehow open the next stage, the parliamentary process, in which Sumar must convince the conservative partners of the investiture bloc to vote in favor of the star measure for the left coalition in this legislature.
Although the text still needs to reach the Council of Ministers and there are matters to be closed, Sumar emerged satisfied this week from the meeting held by Díaz and the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, to reduce the tensions of recent weeks. If everything goes according to plan, the text will soon go to Congress as it came out of the agreement with the unions and it will do so through the urgent procedure, which was one of the issues that Labor had demanded in the middle of the negotiations.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Díaz lowered his tone against his government partner after a few weeks in which the second vice president had decided to put aside her strategy of reducing the “noise” within the coalition, perceiving that the PSOE was doing everything possible for the rule to come into force this year, as signed in the agreement that both parties signed for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez.
“Pacta sunt servanda. The agreements are fulfilled because if we do not break the key commitment with the citizens and generate a demobilization factor,” the Minister of Labor said this Friday, at an event of the Sumar coalition at the Ortega y Gasset Foundation under the slogan ‘Work less, live better’.
The main leaders of the political forces participated in a open event after holding a meeting in which they shared their vision of the moment of the legislature and agreed on the next steps to follow. At the meeting were Sumar’s ministers and also the spokespersons or main faces of the parties that make up the coalition, such as Antonio Maíllo, from Izquierda Unida; Aina Vidal, from the commons; Alberto Ibáñez, from Compromís; Jorge Pueyo, from Chunta Aragonesista; Mar González, from Verdes Equo and Ferrán Rosa, from Més per Mallorca.
The photo seeks to send a message of unity after a few complex months for Sumar, with the wounds still open due to the departure of Íñigo Errejón, involved in a scandal over allegations of sexual abuse. The former spokesperson testified this week precisely in the case that Justice opened following the complaint by actress Elisa Mouliáa.
The last similar image, with the entire coalition, had taken shape after the summer, when Sumar launched a document with its proposals for the negotiation of the General State Budgets. On this occasion, Díaz left the leadership in the interventions to the political parties instead of focusing the event exclusively on the ministers, as in September.
After the meeting, the leaders of the parties presented the priorities for the coming months of the legislature. Although the parliamentary processing of the reduction in working hours will be the main political vector for Sumar in the coming months, with a negotiation that is presumed complicated, the coalition also wants to promote other political battles. It will start with housing, but will also address some issues focused on care, such as the universal parenting benefit and 20-week paid leave that are part of the family law that has been sitting in a drawer in Congress since the beginning of last year.
“The minimum wage and reduction of working hours are two important measures. The Government needs triumphs and to bring joy to the people, but today’s meeting has also set a roadmap for the next challenges: housing, child-rearing benefits,” explain sources close to the second vice president.
The Minister of Labor made it explicit in her event this Friday: “We have a historical debt with this country. This country has never had a family policy and we want to settle it with a universal benefit for dependent children. If the SMI has reduced inequality, the dependent child benefit will reduce the poverty of Spanish families. It has to be accompanied by other good news, the extension of permits [de paternidad] at 20 weeks. Here is the country model we want. We don’t want a country low cost. They are two sides of the same coin. Investing in families is reducing the poverty that breaks our country.”
Junts or the “extravagant companions”
Towards the end of the speech, Díaz made a reference to the “extravagant companions” with whom they will have to finish pushing the reduction of working hours forward in Congress, in a veiled reference to Junts, which precisely this Friday launched a new notice to the suspend the parliamentary negotiations that it maintains with the Government. At least until Sánchez resolves the mess of the trust issue that Carles Puigdemont’s party registered a few weeks ago and that the Lower House Table has not yet admitted to processing, in search of a legal and political fit for the initiative .
This crisis fully affects Sumar because the reduction in working hours is part of those parliamentary negotiations that Junts is now suspending. For this reason, this week the coalition debated internally whether to vote in favor or not of the non-legal proposal with which the independentistas want to force a question of trust and separate themselves from the PSOE on this matter.
Finally, the socialists chose to postpone the decision at the Congress Table for at least a couple of weeks to try to reach a broader agreement with Junts that would unblock the negotiations they are holding in parallel, with the Budgets as the main course.
This Friday, Díaz called on society to mobilize to promote in the streets, together with the unions, the reduction of the working day, with the idea that it is the people who push from the streets and put pressure on the political parties in Congress so that they end up supporting it. “Let’s not lower our arms, let’s work transversally to tell them soon that the day is a reality and that workers can live a little better,” he said.
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