“The Intern Statute cries out to heaven,” the CCOO leader, Unai Sordo, criticized this Monday when asked about the recovery of this measure by the Ministry of Labor, which still has not reached an agreement within the Government coalition. Sordo has warned that the union will not negotiate the regulation again with more rights for scholarship recipients and has demanded that the Executive approve what was agreed with the Ministry of Labor more than a year ago.
The Scholarship Statute, agreed upon by Labor and the majority unions (CCOO and UGT) in June 2023, consists of a basic catalog of rights for students who carry out internships, such as compensation for expenses, vacations and breaks like the rest. of the staff, “adequate tutoring” of students or the protection of their health, among others. It also includes more limits on its use, in number of scholarship recipients and hours of internships, as well as specific sanctions for entities that fail to comply with the rights of scholarship holders.
“We signed it at the end of the previous legislature and the only thing we are going to say is that we demand exhaustive and exact compliance with what we have agreed upon,” said Unai Sordo at an informative breakfast organized by Nueva Economía Fórum.
Sordo points to the “lobby” against
After the agreement with Labor, the Ministry led by Yolanda Díaz failed to bring it to the Council of Ministers, with reluctance in the socialist part of the Government (expressed by the Treasury and Economy), which alleged that the norm still needed work. Meanwhile, universities and business foundations warned that compensating students for expenses posed a “serious danger” to scholarships, and the Government also did not seem to have guaranteed support from some of its parliamentary partners, such as PNV.
A few weeks ago, the Ministry of Labor once again brought the Scholarship Statute to public hearing, with the intention of reactivating the regulation, but once again there is reluctance regarding the rule within the Government, as published by El País and confirmed by government sources. to this medium.
“We are not going to renegotiate any of the issues that we had already negotiated,” Unai Sordo warned. “The only thing we ask of the Government is to implement what we have agreed upon. I insist: cry out to heaven.”
The CCOO leader has pointed out some of the forces that are working to prevent the law from going forward. “I know that it is an issue in which there are a lot of pressures, there is an enormous amount of work lobbyfrom the universities themselves, for example. But it does not allow any further delay nor are we going to renegotiate anything,” he concluded.
Dismissals and rights in the face of digitalization
The union leader analyzed some of the main current issues during the Nueva Economía Forum breakfast, such as the reduction of the maximum working day, problems with access to housing, the arrival of migrants to the country or the debate on territorial financing and taxation.
Unai Sordo has also proposed two more measures for the future of the labor market. On the one hand, increase the obstacles to layoffs, as a complementary measure to the ERTE, which affects a strategy that avoids layoffs in the face of future crises and possible problems in companies. As an alternative, it suggests that companies be offered “alternative formulas for flexibility in working time.”
On the other hand, the leader of CCOO has called for more regulation of what has to do with “the emergence of digitalization and the use of Artificial Intelligence”, among other new technologies. “The disruptive risk that new technologies have on working conditions is potentially immense,” he warned.
Although the so-called Rider Law has already been approved, to combat false self-employment among delivery workers on digital platforms such as Glovo and guarantee access to information to unions about the algorithms that define working conditions, the leader of CCOO has proposed expanding the legislation. “We have to regulate,” Sordo insisted. “We took a step in Spain, with the so-called rider law, (…) but we did it in a very initiatory way and for a small portion of the workers today linked to the platform economy, we have a lot left in this field.”
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