The relations between the Valencia City Council and the majority unions, UGT-PV and CCOO-PV, are not going through their best moment. All on account of Vox’s management in the area of employment, whose councilor, Juanma Badenas, decided to withdraw subsidies from the council’s budgets. A fact that she boasted about and that she later redirected by ensuring that the Employment Pact of the city of Valencia was going to be fulfilled “in all terms until the last minute.”
However, this correction of the initial intention has not prevented tensions from continuing between the social agents and the councilor. The latest example is the absence of unions at the València Emplea Fair, promoted by the Valencia City Council through València Activa, which was held this week in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento.
From CCOO-PV they explain that not feeling “integrated” in the organization is what has motivated them to decline their participation. The fair is organized by València Activa, of which the unions are also patrons, but they feel, and explain this, that they are not counted on “at all.”
They perceive it in the same way in UGT-PV, whose sources explain that since Badenas has been in office in the social dialogue they are not being taken into account at all. They claim that ten days before the fair was held they were asked if they wanted to have their own stand at the fair, and they believe that these are not ways to involve them in an event organized by an entity, València Activa, of which they are patrons.
“Social dialogue is not being respected,” insist UGT-PV, who maintain that redirecting relations between unions and the corporation depends on the mayor of València, María José Catalá. Especially for the next year, when substantial changes are expected in the Employment Pact, in force since 2001 with the then mayor Rita Barberá. “We have hope,” they add from the training, hoping that the relationship can be redirected.
After the unions refused to participate, the PSPV also resigned from participating this week, “as a show of solidarity with the unions and in protest at the breakdown of social dialogue that Catalá and Vox are promoting.” Councilor Javier Mateo assured that the Popular Party “allows Vox to do and undo as it pleases” in the València Activa Foundation and criticized that “the Vox spokesperson, with the approval of Catalá, has decided that social dialogue is not important” .
The Valencia Employment Pact includes both the council, the unions and the employers’ association, the Business Confederation of the Valencian Community, which has participated in the fair. The business federations that were looking for candidates were Comerçmoble, an association of furniture and habitat businesses in the Valencian Community; the Valencian Federation of Construction Entrepreneurs (FEVEC); the Valencian Hospitality Business Federation (FEHV) and the Valencian Federation of Transport and Logistics Businessmen (FVET), which recently sent an SOS to society to attract young talent. In total, a hundred companies have participated in the forum.
In this fourth edition, 8,144 registrations have been received and 30,820 applications have been registered for the 475 job offers published, an increase of almost 50% in registered people and 183% in the case of the applications presented, with a growth of 40 % in offers published for the event.