Either the employers enter into an agreement on the reduction of the working day or its application will be more expensive for small businesses. This is the message that the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, sent to the CEOE this Thursday. Díaz has called on the employers to make a decision. “If the leadership of the employers’ association is going to make a minimum wage, harming companies, or is it willing to negotiate,” Díaz pointed out.
The Ministry of Labor has offered employers a support plan for small businesses, the Pyme 375 Plan, with aid in Social Security contributions to companies with less than 10 workers who hire due to the application of the reduction of working hours to 37 and a half hours a week, or who convert contracts to part-time.
However, the offer that Labor put on the table, also with training aid and support plans for SMEs, is conditional on negotiation by employers. If the employers do not join a tripartite pact, the Ministry will look for another pact. This time only with the unions.
“In social dialogue there are no vetoes”
The second vice president has stressed that social dialogue “has to have incentives.” “We take it very seriously. “There are no vetoes in social dialogue,” he insisted.
Yolanda Díaz has said that many companies with “less than five workers” need accompanying measures to implement the reduction in working hours. Thus, the head of Labor has maintained that the employers must decide “if they want us to go down that path.” [el de las ayudas] or if they simply want the path of strict application of the law.”
As a framework, Díaz recalled that Labor was willing to raise the minimum wage by 4% last year if the employers entered into a tripartite agreement. In the absence of an agreement, the Government agreed to the increase only with the unions, and the minimum wage rose by 5%. “The employers preferred to do other things, of course, it seems that they did not benefit businessmen and women,” Yolanda Díaz criticized.
International Labor Congress
Yolanda Díaz’s statements took place at the presentation of the Ministry of the International Labor Congress, an event that will bring together in Madrid on November 13 and 14 “ministers of Labor from various continents, representatives of trade union organizations, the European Union (EU), experts on the subject and intellectuals from different countries around the world committed to the defense of labor rights,” reported Trabajo.
The challenges posed in the workplace by “algorithmic slavery, the shielding of union power or the imperative advancement of democracy at work” will be addressed. Also how to strengthen social dialogue and “how to depatriarchalize the world of work or the constitution of a front that unites workers from the global South and North, identifying priorities for action for the protection and expansion of labor rights around the world”, they have added from the Ministry.
“Madrid will become the global capital of decent work,” said the second vice president about this event, which is expected to be attended by a dozen labor ministers from countries such as Belgium, Cape Verde, Colombia, Slovenia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nepal, Palestine, Senegal or South Africa, as well as former holders of this portfolio from Argentina, Italy and Portugal, among others.
“Experts from civil society such as jurists or intellectuals such as Owen Jones, Catherine Barnard, Paris Marx, Laura Calafà or Remedios Zafra, among others, will also participate,” they explained in Díaz’s department.
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