The Valencian Government made it clear yesterday that it will eliminate the aid program to encourage the reduction of working hours promoted by the previous Botànic executive, not without certain internal reluctance. “It is a program that we are going to remove because it has not generated the slightest interest,” declared the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, José Antonio Rovira, in Les Corts Valencianes. An announcement that comes 48 hours after PSOE and Sumar presented their project for a new coalition government with the reduction of the working day to 37 and a half hours without salary reduction as one of its star proposals.

The reduction of the working day has been a demand of Sumar and one of the workhorses of Compromís is his eight years of management in the Valencian Government, from which he left after the victory of the PP in the regional elections last May. The Consell had devised a program – more ambitious than the commitment made by Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz – of subsidies aimed at establishing incentives for the reduction of the working day to four days or 32 hours a week (five and a half hours less than what proposed by PSOE and Sumar).

To be eligible for Valencian aid, companies had to assume a reduction in the ordinary working day of 30% of the workforce (in the case of companies with up to 49 workers) or 20% (in companies with 50 or more employees). . The idea was to raise the stakes (and the aid) year after year.

Precisely, a little over two weeks ago, the name of the 18 companies from across the Valencian Community that will receive the 790,000 euros allocated to this call promoted by the previous Valencian executive was published in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat Valenciana.

A line of action that the current Government of Carlos Mazón has no intention of following. And even less so now that the Spanish left that is trying to invest Pedro Sánchez as president seems to endorse this idea of ??reducing working time.

The Valencian councilor was fully aware of this when this Thursday, in the control session, he responded to the question of the Compromís deputy Mónica Álvaro who demanded the maintenance of this program that her party promoted and that, in part, has served as a basis to the proposal of the possible future of Spain. The reduction of working hours, argued Rovira, has “no motivation” for businessmen, which is why his government, he added, will opt for active employment policies and “not for giving gifts to companies as in the pact signed by PSOE and Add to that all the economic agents are saying what the consequences will be.”

In fact, this Thursday, along the lines of Rovira, the Valencian employers’ association CEV expressed that, “taking into account the slowdown of the economy as a whole, both regionally, nationally and globally,” its concern about the consequences that it could have on the productive activity and employment the proposal to reduce the working day to 37.5 hours, without salary reduction, included in the PSOE-Sumar Agreement”.

The Valencian Business Confederation chaired by Salvador Navarro points out that “in addition to negative effects on the productivity and competitiveness of the different branches and companies in the private sector, the proposal to reduce the working day, far from creating more employment, would mean having an even greater impact in the increase in costs that not all companies can bear”. For this reason, they consider that “it is not a measure that can be applied uniformly throughout the business fabric.”

For years, Compromís has been very significantly committed to reducing working hours. In fact, in the city of Valencia, the government of Joan Ribó (2015-2023) promoted a pilot experience and, taking advantage of the coincidence of some festivities, promoted a four-day work week to study its consequences in different areas.

After field work carried out through 2,100 surveys, it was concluded that the experience helped to improve the health and well-being of workers and air quality, as well as an increase in activity for the hospitality industry, but it represented a decrease of 20 % in business sales and greater saturation of emergency medical services.