“Governing is not resisting.” It is almost a mantra that the second vice president, Minister of Labor and leader of Sumar in the Government, Yolanda Díaz, has repeated since she returned from the summer vacation, after a very complicated start to the political year. He did it again this Monday in an interview at SER Chain in which he used the phrase to criticize the Socialist Party for the progressive coalition’s lack of transformative capacity.
Convinced that only through management will the Government be able to revalidate its delicate majority at the polls and herself, revive the weakened Sumar project, Díaz tries to promote from the vice presidency and the Labor portfolio measures that have real effects on the population, the the only formula it contemplates so that the minority partners of the coalition can recover.
Díaz left the organic leadership of Sumar months ago to focus on his work in the Government, aware that it is this work that earned him great popularity among the electorate while the internal battle and electoral disasters have only deteriorated his image and the of his incipient formation. His figure had been greatly worn down by the internal noise when it came to building the coalition with all the leftist forces, but especially after the break with Podemos and the terrible cycle of electoral results in the first half of the year. To regain the trust of voters, Díaz hopes to carry out some of his main campaign promises as soon as possible.
In recent weeks, the vice president has accelerated part of her ministry’s agenda, especially the reduction in working hours that Sumar placed as a star measure for the legislature and that until now was stuck due to negotiations with the employers. In the absence of an agreement with the unions, which will arrive in the coming days, the norm is already very close to traveling to the Council of Ministers to begin the parliamentary process where it has to articulate a complex majority.
“It will come into effect next year and now we are entering the final stretch. We are going to close an agreement with the unions, the administrative process is going to go through, which is going to be preferential and urgent, and we are going to a legislative process in around five to six months,” Díaz said in the interview this Monday in which he trusted in tying up the necessary support under the premise that this is a measure that has great acceptance among the entire electorate, including those on the right.
The law that the Ministry intends to approve represents the first reduction in the maximum working day in four decades, to go from 40 hours a week to 37 and a half hours. In addition, it includes other complementary measures, but which Labor and the unions highlight as fundamental, such as reforming time control so that it is effective and accessible “in real time” to the Labor Inspection, as well as toughening sanctions for non-compliance with the regulations. companies.
Díaz has even tried to attract the Popular Party to a social advance that has a very majority support in society and even went so far as to offer million-dollar aid to employers to compensate SMEs. Now he believes that it is time to launch it, with or without the political and economic right.
For its part, the increase in the minimum wage, which is debated every year-end, has become a banner of the Ministry of Labor since the previous coalition government, when many tensions arose with the Economy area led by Nadia Calviño. The government agreement between PSOE and Sumar contemplates that “the SMI will continue to grow throughout the legislature to ensure its purchasing power, guaranteed in the Workers’ Statute that it will increase at a pace of 60% of the average salary.” This year, Labor has once again summoned the commission of experts to determine what that 60% reference is, but Díaz has already warned of a red line: that the SMI rises more than inflation. The vice president has stated that she will try to reach an agreement with the employers, but has already acknowledged that, if this is not possible – as has happened in other years – she hopes to close an agreement with the unions.
In recent weeks, in addition, Díaz has regained prominence for two unrelated issues. The first, the DANA tragedy. Just as happened with the pandemic, when the Ministry of Labor designed the ERTE mechanism to save millions of companies and workers, the Government approved after the storm a new “labor shield” with a series of measures to protect employment and employees. working people. Among them, leave to be absent without loss of salary, an extension of ERTE due to force majeure and restrictions on layoffs.
Deferred triumph of the Rider Law
This Monday, just one day before its founder Óscar Pierre went to court accused of a crime against workers’ rights, Glovo announced a radical change in its business system: “Changing from an autonomous model to a model based on employment for its delivery drivers in Spain,” according to the statement released by the company’s parent company, Delivery Hero.
A day later, before the judge, Pierre acknowledged that the decision is closely related to the search for social peace to avoid new “discussions” with the Labor Inspection, although he separated it from the criminal case he faces.
In addition to the criminal proceedings opened by the Prosecutor’s Office in Barcelona, in a pioneering case in Spain due to Glovo’s false self-employed model, the company has a horizon of litigation derived from its labor operations: the company Just Eat, which has a labor model for its workers (the majority are subcontracted) it claims 295 million euros from Glovo for unfair competition, while the amount in unpaid contributions and fines from the Labor Inspection amounts to 200 million.
This Glovo announcement represents a delayed triumph of the Rider Law promoted by the Díaz ministry, which also encountered some resistance in the socialist wing of the Council of Ministers, but which was finally approved in Congress during the last legislature, a pioneering piece of legislation. for the employment of digital platform delivery drivers, which gave companies like Glovo and Deliveroo a period of three months to adapt to the labor model. The legislation presumes that digital platform delivery drivers are employed workers and, in addition, introduces an obligation of transparency for all companies that use algorithms in what affects labor relations.
“No company, no matter how big it is, no matter how much power it has, no large technology company, can prevail over democracy. Today democracy has won in our country. Finally, the Glovo company is going to regularize more than 60,000 delivery workers,” Díaz celebrated this Monday upon his arrival at an Employment Council in Brussels in reaction to the news that was known at that time. “It is worth governing to do this,” he added.
Precisely that day in Brussels, Díaz would score another victory with his European colleagues by blocking Hungarian Víktor Orbán’s attempt to limit a community law against false scholarship holders. The minister, along with eight other governments, promoted a minority to block the proposal of the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU to water down the internship directive with which the European Commission intended to put a stop to false interns.
Spain, Germany, Romania, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Cyprus thus rejected the aspirations of Viktor Orbán’s far-right government. It will now be in the hands of Poland, which will assume the reins of the negotiations within the 27 next semester, a new negotiation of the text that garners sufficient support to move forward.
“Really, if this directive goes as intended by the Hungarian presidency, we would do a lot of harm to working people. Yes, it is worth defending these things and above all I believe that it is not the same, it does not matter who governs,” said the vice president in the interview on Cadena SER.
In that same interview, Díaz made it clear that the organic issues that affect Sumar – Movimiento Sumar – are no longer his occupation. “I believe that Sumar has changed its roadmap, the colleagues are working on a roadmap and a country project. And I wish them all the luck,” she said and later clarified, when asked about the use of the third person, that she is no longer in the leadership of the party. However, and although she has left the general coordination, the position with which she was elected less than a year ago, last March, Díaz continues to go to the executives and maintains her influence over the decisions that are made.
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