Yolanda Díaz agrees with the unions to reduce the working day in 2025 in the heat of the fight with the Economy

Also for signed agreements

The business organization led by Antonio Garamendi withdrew from the agreement last November, after eleven months of social dialogue negotiations without any fruit. The employers unanimously rejected reducing the maximum working day by law because they understood that it is an exclusive matter of collective bargaining, which is why the second vice president announced that rwould withdraw any aid to companies to implement the work week. The date of application of the measure is 2025, even for collective agreements already signed with a higher maximum working day, for which there is until December 31 to adapt to the standard. This will imply the opening of 4,000 trading desks.

The agreement leaves behind four decades with a maximum of 40 hours of work, since the last reduction approved by the PSOE Government of Felipe González in the 80s and will be a blow especially for SMEs and the self-employed taking into account that this reduction in working hours, if finally implemented, will maintain the worker’s salary. A Cepyme report placed the direct cost of this reduction at 1,000 euros per year per worker on average, said that it would have a direct cost of 12,000 million euros, which It amounts to 42,000 million if the loss of added value is taken into account.

And to ensure that companies comply and avoid possible fraud, Díaz wants an active role for the Labor Inspection which, in this case, would have remote access to time record of the workers. The idea is the complete digitization of this record and control of the hours worked to allow, in this way, the supervision of the inspectors in real time. An action that would be accompanied by significant sanctions for offenders.

The reaction of the employers has been immediate. The vice president of CEOE and president of ATA, Lorenzo Lovehas been very harsh in its account of ‘X’ with the measure. “For the first time in Democracy,” he says, “a reduction in working hours is represented unilaterally, without taking into account one of the parties to the collective bargaining.” He assures that “the result was written, it was a political and unilateral decision and a dialogue of extras.”

With this legislative step forward, the head of Labor has assured that she intends to gain productivity, an objective that recently questioned the OECD. The international organization pointed out in an event with the presence of the minister that “there is only limited evidence on the impact of a reduction in the working week on productivity.”

The closing of this commitment is a clear challenge to the Economy that reproduces the continuous friction that the second vice president had with Nadia Calviño, strong tensions that caused several threats of resignation by the former Minister of Economy. Two days ago, Minister Carlos Body asked for time to implement the measure. «It is not so much an issue of entry into force, where we have a specific commitment that we want to fulfill, which is the government pact, but rather making sure that we are doing so helps make this measure sustainable, which is hold over time since our companies can assimilate it«. Díaz’s reaction was to accuse the head of Economy of failing to comply with the agreement and of aligning himself with the interests of the employers, and considers the interference of Economy in the debate “very serious.”

«I thought that once Nadia Calviño had left, things were going to change in the Government. We have different people in the Ministry of Economy and the behaviors are the same,” said Díaz, in an interview in La Sexta.