“It was a mistake”. That is how clear the PP campaign spokesman, Borja Sémper, has stated when it comes to qualifying his party’s decision to vote this legislature against the labor reform of the PSOE government. And, especially, taking into account that it was “the same”, he has added, that it was approved in the time of Mariano Rajoy only “with some modification”. Sémper has thus gone one step further after his leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, guaranteed in Brussels that he “will respect” and will not modify the labor reform approved in this legislature, except in some “adjustment”.
In an interview on Antena 3, and when asked if this change of position -given that the PP voted against the law (although it went ahead due to a mistake by former popular deputy Alberto Casero)- does not detract from their moral authority when it comes to criticize Pedro Sánchez, he recalled that Feijóo was not the national president of the party when it was approved. “That is an objective reality”, he added, to then recall that everyone said that the so-called reform that was approved “was the same law that was approved in Rajoy’s time with some modification”.
Regarding the decision to vote against, the popular leader has indicated that “they will have to ask the previous leadership”, then in the hands of Pablo Casado. “I think it was a mistake, today and then. What Alberto Núñez Feijóo is not going to do is go against common sense, is to go against the social agents, what the business fabric says and what it does not say ultimately the Spanish economy”, has settled.
In response to what Feijóo said yesterday, the Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called the PP’s change of position “sarcasm”. “It is curious that they have gone from repealing ‘Sanchismo’ to recognizing that the ‘Sanchista’ labor reform is good for Spain (…) I leave the sarcasm there,” Sánchez said in statements to the media after the end of the European Council in Brussels. In this line, the president of the Executive has warned of the consequences that the path of repeal proposed by the PP could entail in the economic field. “You cannot repeal” the labor reform, said Sánchez, since with it he has achieved that one in two contracts are “stable”.
For his part, the general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, has asked the popular on Friday to give explanations to the Spaniards as to “why he lied” about the labor reform and has indicated that “deception cannot come free”. In a joint communiqué, UGT and CC.OO. They insist on the “especially positive” effects of the labor reform, with “unquestionable” data. Thus, they also demand that the PP take into account “the importance of a reform reached with the consensus of business and union organizations” and request that it withdraw the appeal for parliamentary protection that it presented before the Constitutional Court against the approval of the labor reform in The congress.
