Here is a labor reform agreed in December 2021 between the Central Government and all social agents, which was miraculously approved in February 2022 by the Congress of Deputies, and now the PP, which was the main opponent , accepts as “substantially good”. During the last few hours, the Popular Party has even gone further and described its vote against seeds as a mistake.
These are the statements of the PP campaign spokesperson, Borja Sémper, who declared: “I think it was a mistake, today and then. What Alberto Núnez Feijóo will not do is go against common sense, of social agents, of what the business fabric says.” On whether this change of position does not take away their moral authority when criticizing Pedro Sánchez, he said that Feijóo was not the president of the party at the time. “They will have to ask the previous management that”, he added with reference to Pablo Casado, in an interview with Antena 3.
In this way, the PP closes a radical turn in its position on the labor reform that its president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, already indicated on Thursday in Brussels, when he stated that, if it reaches the Spanish Government, it can propose some “adjustment”, but that “this labor reform agreed [between the employer and the unions] will respect it”.
Marked as one of the milestones agreed with Brussels to access the funds of the Recovery Plan, the labor reform has given rise to paradoxes, such as the fact that the Parliament was a hair’s breadth from overturning a consensual agreement with the unions and employers; singular episodes, such as the error of popular deputy Alberto Casero that, to his dismay, saved the validation of the decree law; demarcations of regular members of the Central Government, with ERC and PNB voting against it, and scenes of transfugism of two UPN deputies.
A cocktail that was about to eliminate the reform and, as a derivative, the vice-president and Minister of Labor Yolanda Díaz, a major promoter of the rule and who had her resignation ready.
With the latest position of the PP, it seems clear that the reform will be maintained regardless of who is the next tenant of Moncloa and that, if there are changes, they will be of little weight.
The Central Government’s reaction came from President Pedro Sánchez, who resorted to sarcasm. “It is curious that they have gone from repealing Sanchism to recognizing that the Sanchist labor reform is good for Spain… I leave the sarcasm here,” said Sánchez from Brussels, to add that, “if what works is repealed, we run the risk of slowing down an economy that creates a lot of employment”.
For their part, the unions UGT and CC.OO. they claimed to the PP that, to give credibility to its words, it should withdraw the appeal it has presented against the reform to the Constitutional Court. “I believe, honestly, that this rectification is good news, but the lie, the deception, cannot go free”, stated the general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, who added that “when he died, they combed him ”, and that if it were for the PP, “today we would not know what it is to be able to live and work with stability in our country”.
The unions had already demanded the PP to pronounce on its intentions regarding the labor reform, and now they are also asking it to pronounce on other issues, such as the pension reform and the rise of the interprofessional minimum wage.
