The Ministry of Labor gives the role to social agents in the negotiation to reduce the working day. It is the unions and the employers who will initiate on their own, without the participation of the Government, the first analysis of how to carry out the reduction of working time. In any case, Labor leaves room for how, but maintains its objectives of leaving the working day at 37.5 hours in 2025 and reinforcing the time record, currently considered ineffective. This two-way negotiation will be parallel to the one carried out in a tripartite manner in the framework of social dialogue.
This morning the first social dialogue meeting was held to launch this negotiation, which is expected to be complex, with initial positions in which the Government sets the objective of 37.5 hours and is open to negotiating how to achieve it, and an employers’ association that insists that it must be treated by sectors. All combined with the exchange of statements in recent days between the vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, stating that they would reduce the working day with or without the agreement of the employers, and the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, criticizing that this is not social dialogue.
In any case, today the CEOE has obtained something that it demanded, which is a bipartite negotiation, between two, without the Government, at least for the initial approach, although the Ministry of Labor will also follow it and in parallel will call three-way meetings to see the progress.
“They have asked us to be able to dialogue in a bipartite manner, while speaking with the Government. We accept this bipartite debate, but the Government will walk in parallel by calling for social dialogue meetings,” stated the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, at the end of the meeting.
For their part, the unions explained it this way. “We do not renounce tripartite dialogue, but we give ourselves a margin of time for bipartite dialogue, between employers and unions to see if we can bring positions closer together,” said Mari Cruz Vicente, Secretary of Trade Union Action of CC.OO. “In a bipartite way to see how we are going to apply it. If we reach an agreement with the objectives, perfect. If not, the reduction of working time is not in question,” stated Fernando Luján, deputy general secretary of Union Policy of UGT.
Therefore, initial negotiation between unions and employers to try to clear the ground, to see if positions can be brought closer. In this sense, the Ministry of Labor has left room for social agents to try, although remembering that its objectives are unalterable, reducing the working day to 37.5 hours in 2025, which it estimates would benefit more than 12 million workers. , and a time record that is effective, and allows the Labor and Social Security Inspection to act forcefully where there are non-compliance. “We are not willing to see the rules become objects of costume jewelry,” Pérez Rey warned.
The reinforcement of time control is one of the elements that Labor already announced last week that it was going to incorporate in this negotiation, considering that the current regulations do not serve to guarantee compliance. In this sense, they propose both modifications to the current system and a toughening of sanctions, so that it is effective and carried out “without restrictions or fraud.”