The Ministry of Labor is working on an agreement with the unions to reduce the ordinary working day from 40 to 37 and a half hours in 2025. The Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey, announced this Thursday an “imminent” pact with UGT and CC OO after the last meeting at the ministry, in which CEOE has certified its rejection of the standard. The number two of Labor has confirmed that this Friday the parliamentary process of the norm will begin with the beginning of the public consultation. In addition, he has said that the Executive renounces the intermediate step, at 38 and a half hours in 2024, for the short remaining period.
“The texts on the table are part of what we could already classify as an imminent agreement. We are quite close, beyond technical adjustments,” Pérez Rey said after the meeting, who hopes to reach a consensus with CC OO and UGT “in the coming days.” Union negotiators have also conveyed optimism. “Fringes are missing. We return to the text of the month of July, with which we already said that we were comfortable. “It needs polishing,” indicated the Deputy Secretary General of Union Policy of UGT, Fernando Luján. Carlos Gutiérrez, Secretary of Studies and Union Training of CC OO, has said that the Secretary of State is “a little optimistic”, but has recognized that there is “a shared vision”. “There is room, we have to let work, but we have to reach the agreement quickly,” added Gutiérrez. The meeting, the last in which the three actors of social dialogue (businessmen, workers and Government) participated, lasted just over an hour, much less than usual.
The employers’ rejection, known from the Executive Committee of CEOE two weeks ago, greatly complicates the parliamentary process of the law, since, discounting the support of the left, the support of Junts and PNV would still be necessary. The Basques are closer to support (although they convey more doubts than months ago), but the Catalans, according to business sources, are against the reduction of the ordinary maximum working day. However, Carles Puigdemont’s party has not publicly defined its position.
The Government’s proposal, which was transmitted to the social agents in June and clarified in July, maintains overtime hours at the maximum of 80 currently set out in the legislation, provides flexibility for the reduction to be applied on an annual basis and reinforces the time record. so that the sanctions are given per employee and not per company (which would greatly increase the cost in punishments). In addition, he wants the time registration system to be digital and for the Inspection to be able to access it directly to monitor non-compliance.
Direct aid to SMEs and bonuses on the contribution of new hires, which Labor put on the table to seduce CEOE, will not be part of the agreement. Negotiation sources believe that this aid can be resurrected during the parliamentary process, in an attempt to attract right-wing nationalist parties, although they are not included in the pact with the unions.
Criticisms of CEOE
Pérez Rey has criticized the employers for their rejection of the reduction in working hours. “When time passes, the employers will have a hard time explaining why they have not participated. It is a measure that is a logical consequence of the passage of time,” said Pérez Rey, who has elaborated on the same idea: “They will have to explain to 12 million working people (those who would benefit from the cut, according to the ministry’s calculation) why it is not possible to reduce the working day 40 years later, in the era of automation and artificial intelligence, of so many technological advances that multiply productivity ”.
From Cepyme, the employers’ association of small and medium-sized companies, they indicate that these companies “will be the most affected by the reduction of working hours by law; Collective bargaining is the only way to guarantee that SMEs can adapt.”
The ministry’s negotiator has expressed “perplexity” because “11 months after starting to negotiate, CEOE and Cepyme sit at the table to say that the reduction of working hours can only be done through collective bargaining, when the maximum working day is regulated in the Statute of the Workers.” He has classified the position of the employers as “a joke.”
Labor agreements without the employer’s association have been the norm since the middle of the last legislature: this has happened with the increases in the minimum wage or with the intern status (which is not yet in force due to the rejection of the PSOE). The last agreement that Díaz’s department managed to close with businessmen was the regulatory development to prevent discrimination against the LGTBI+ group in companies. Employers and unions also agreed with the Government (with Social Security, in this case) on the last part of the pension reform.
Now the parliamentary procedure arrives, urgently as confirmed by Yolanda Díaz, to try to meet the deadlines established in the PSOE and Sumar Government pact. Business sources see “very clearly” that the law will not prosper in Congress, and even less so without employer support. A clue in this regard is one of the phrases most repeated by Garamendi in recent months: “Go to Parliament and get it approved.” He has repeatedly encouraged the ministry to bring an agreement with the unions to Congress.
Negotiation path
Negotiations began on January 25. From then until June, unions and employers negotiated on their own, seeking a joint agreement to present to the ministry, but there was no agreement. The business’s insistence that the reduction in working hours be compensated by a cap on the maximum annual overtime hours and the union’s rejection of this approach, among other disagreements, ran this two-way dialogue aground. With that starting point, it was already difficult to imagine that the ministry would reach an agreement, given that its position is similar to that of the unions. Before the summer it seemed that the ministry would reach an agreement only with the power plants, since it intended to bring the rule to Congress as soon as possible to meet the deadlines set by the PSOE and Sumar government agreement.
However, the ministry extended the negotiation (after the PSOE asked for patience to attract businessmen), with new meetings after the summer holidays. Already then, the unions were accusing the employers of a delaying strategy, which was not worth continuing to negotiate, and hence they protested at the end of September in front of the CEOE headquarters throughout Spain. Despite how far apart the positions were, Labor conveyed optimism regarding the participation of the employers. “I am absolutely convinced that there is a possibility of agreement on this matter in our country. I hope we move forward, I’m not getting up from this table. “I have infinite patience,” Díaz said in early October.
The employers continue to defend that changes in the working day are part of collective bargaining and that they must be placed within that framework, without unilateral reductions. They argue that in the most productive sectors, those that manage to do more in less time, the agreed working hours have already been reduced without the need for legal changes. Unions and the ministry counter that this precisely reinforces the need for regulatory modification, since collective bargaining will never manage to reduce working hours in the most precarious sectors.
Leave a Reply