CEOE has already expressed its doubts about the Ministry’s latest proposal and CCOO and UGT will take to the streets to pressure in favour of the 37.5 hours
September 22 () –
The Ministry of Labour will resume negotiations with CCOO, UGT, CEOE and Cepyme on Tuesday, 24 September, to reduce the weekly working day from the current 40 hours to 37.5 hours, according to sources from the negotiators who spoke to Europa Press.
This meeting was scheduled to take place on September 19, but a two-day trip to Barcelona by the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, to accompany the second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz, led to the convening of the roundtable being postponed to the 24th.
During this trip, Díaz met with the president of the Catalan employers’ association Foment, Josep Sánchez-Llibre, with Pimec and with other representatives of the Catalan business sector, to whom he explained that the coalition government’s plan to reduce the working day will allow for increased productivity.
The last meeting of negotiators took place on September 9, when the Labour Department brought to the social dialogue table a new proposal to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) apply the reduction in working hours when it comes into force.
Specifically, the Secretary of State for Employment, who is leading the negotiations at this social dialogue table, proposed to CCOO, UGT, CEOE and Cepyme the launch of a support plan for SMEs, called ‘Pyme 375’, which includes bonuses for new permanent jobs that are generated as a result of the reduction in working hours.
These bonuses would be aimed at those employment contracts that SMEs make up for the time left free by their staff when working hours are reduced.
“The reduction of working hours will not only be an element that will allow us to increase productivity and the well-being of workers and employers, but it will also allow us to create jobs,” said Pérez Rey after the last meeting.
The aim of this plan, according to the Ministry of Labour, is to ensure that the reduction of working hours to 37.5 hours per week applies to all SMEs and not just to certain “privileged” sectors, such as banking or telecommunications, since SMEs are where most of the employment in Spain is concentrated, accounting for 90% of the business fabric.
“We have almost one and a half million companies that have less than ten employees and that employ almost three and a half million workers. We want these small companies to incorporate the reduction of working hours and, therefore, their workers have the right to work less and maintain their salary,” Pérez Rey stressed in this regard.
The proposed plan, which unions and employers must decide on, includes specialised training for companies to help them complete the transition to 37.5 hours a week and to enable them to correctly implement the new time recording that the Labour Department wants to promote.
“The guidance and employment centres that have been financed thanks to the deployment of European funds will advise, accompany and train entrepreneurs, small business owners, so that they have the capacity to reduce working hours and can do so in the best possible way,” explained Pérez Rey, who also announced that technical guides will be launched to help implement the reduction of working hours in the different economic sectors.
The Ministry of Labour continues to propose that one of the elements on which the reduction of working hours could be based is the irregular distribution of working hours, as this could help some sectors to apply this measure. However, it has made it clear that distributing working hours irregularly does not mean increasing them or doing overtime, but rather concentrating them on those moments when companies have a greater need for production.
With the proposal of the ‘Pyme 375’ plan, open to the incorporation of employers and unions, the scope of the negotiation of this social dialogue table is now complete, which includes, in addition to the reduction of the working day, the right to digital disconnection and the improvement of the time record to convert it into an electronic instrument, accessible to the Labor Inspection.
The Ministry has committed to sending its proposal in writing, including this new plan for SMEs, so that the social agents could make their appropriate considerations at the meeting scheduled for this report. However, there have already been some pronouncements from both the CEOE and the union side.
CEOE CRITICIZES THE GOVERNMENT’S “INTERVENTIONISM”
According to sources from the employers’ association CEOE, consulted by Europa Press, although they will evaluate the written proposal from the Ministry, a priori, they consider that it “deepens the interventionism of labour relations and the disdain for collective bargaining.”
The organisation headed by Antonio Garamendi criticises the intention to make the State Public Employment Service (SEPE) an advisor to SMEs on the reduction of working hours “when it is not capable of reintegrating even 3% of the country’s unemployed into the labour market, as if there were not already offices, consultancies and companies qualified to do so”.
On the other hand, CEOE describes the plan to help SMEs proposed by the Ministry of Labour as “absolutely imprecise” and considers that, in itself, “it implies the recognition that its continuous announcements are slowing down job creation.”
CCOO AND UGT MOBILIZE TO PUT PRESSURE ON CEOE
For their part, UGT and CCOO have stated that they will maintain the announced protests to demand a reduction in working hours because the employers’ association continues to position itself “against” increasing working hours to 37.5 hours per week.
“We are going to increase the mobilizations, we are going to increase the tension to achieve something that seems fair to us, but that is also something that Spanish society demands,” they warned.
The first milestone of these demonstrations will be the one that both organisations have called for on 26 September at the employers’ association headquarters in all the provincial capitals of Spain to demand the reduction of the working week to 37.5 hours.
“CEOE’s attitude continues to be that of denying that Spain needs a legal reduction in working hours. It is a mockery of the framework of social dialogue,” denounce the unions, who suspect that the employers’ association “has information” that the reduction in working hours would not be approved by Parliament.
“Initially, in the face of a possible parliamentary majority to change the law, CEOE showed its intention to negotiate,” said Pepe Álvarez last Friday, adding that now, after meeting with Junts, employers are trying to prevent working hours from being reduced in Spain. “We have some information about these meetings –CEOE and Junts–, which is curious in a really curious country,” he said ironically.
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