The vice-president and Sumar candidate for the presidency, Yolanda Díaz, yesterday launched the proposal to resume the gradual reduction of the working day to reach 37.5 hours per week this year – two and a half hours less than the current ones – , and in the medium term at 32 hours per week. Díaz, in a video published on social networks, stressed that this reduction does not have to lead to salary cuts, since today “in Spain, on average, people work 300 hours more per year than in Germany and 150 hours more than in France”.
Díaz assured that the process will be carried out through social dialogue, that is to say, with the competition of unions and employers, and recalled that historically increases in productivity have been accompanied by reductions in working hours and this has not brought harm to employers or workers. According to the press release issued by Sumar, “in 2024, a maximum working day of 37.5 hours will be established by law and a process of social dialogue will be opened to continue reducing it to 32 hours per week”.
With this measure, Sumar aims to improve “the compatibility of work time with the rest of the uses of time, from a balanced distribution of care and self-care tasks to the time devoted to training, leisure or social participation” . “Time is the most valuable thing for those of us who don’t have big properties or important surnames”, says Díaz in the video.
In addition, Sumar focuses on one of the issues that Díaz already dealt with in the last legislature, “better control overtime and compensate them with free time, eliminate uncontrolled variable schedules and regulate the schedules of public services” . Díaz also aims to implement “more flexible time management throughout the career, taking into account (…) the life cycle and including the relief contract”.
The candidate emphasizes that the 20th century began with 2,800 hours worked per year and ended with 1,700. The current 8-hour working day was established in 1919, after the La Canadenca strike, in Barcelona, ??although at that time the week included six working days, so it was a 48-hour working week and not 40 hours , as it has been since 1992.
