The social agents want to accelerate this week all the negotiations so that the Government approves next Tuesday the extension to the current ERTE scheme, which ends on June 30. Antonio Garamendi, president of the employer's association, requested it yesterday like this on the eve of the meeting that he will hold today with the unions with Vice President Nadia Calviño.

Both employers and unions demand an agreement that runs until next December in order to maintain a stable regulatory framework on which to carry out the de-escalation, minimizing the risk for the companies and workers affected. The Ministry of Labor led by Yolanda Díaz has shown its willingness to study it, although its initial proposal is to extend them until September .

Precisely that month one of the clauses of the current ERTE scheme would expire, specifically the one that establishes that the 70% benefit charged during the first six months of unemployment becomes 50% from the seventh. For those workers who entered one of these files in the second half of March, the term would run out in September. The cost of unemployment benefits until May exceeded 9,000 million euros.

"The ERTEs agreement should come next week before the next," Garamendi said at a meeting at the College of Economists. "Companies need a serious approach to how they can work on issues to make their business plan in the short term," he requested, explaining that it would not be practical to reach the last week of June without a regulatory basis on the return to business.

In fact, the mobility restrictions that were decreed in March as a result of the health alert are expected to conclude on June 21, making the return of workers more and more intense in the coming weeks.

During last May, the figure of 3.4 million people was reached, those who had seen their employment suspended, but already at the end of the month, 387,000 rejoined the activity. Until the first week of June the figure was already close to 600,000 workers , according to data provided by the Ministry of Social Security.

In the new extension of the ERTE, the protection scheme aims to be less general and more adapted to the circumstances of each sector and each territory, encouraging in any case the return to activity by reducing the benefits of being hosted.

Employers have indicated on more than one occasion that the conversion of ERTEs due to force majeure should be carried out automatically and removing the clause that requires them to maintain employment for six months from the return to activity, something to which unions are opposed. Its main interlocutor in the Government, Vice President Calviño, has already announced that there will be flexibility for companies but without canceling the clause. “Employment adjustments must be made in hours and not in workers. We must look for alternative flexibility instruments that are different from the usual ones, ”he announced last week.

Negotiations to reach this agreement lost a week as a result of the PSOE and Podemos pact with Bildu on the repeal of the labor reform to guarantee support for the extension of the state of alarm. Garamendi affirmed that at this time ideological declarations are superfluous and he was open to negotiating "next year" the changes in the labor framework.

In this same sense, it was expressed about the bill that the Government prepares on teleworking, a norm that will establish that companies compensate their employees for using this type of activity. "This is neither the time nor the way to propose structural changes in the labor market, you have to move the economy forward," he said.

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  • Bildu
  • Nadia Calviño
  • PSOE
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  • Social Security
  • Yolanda Diaz
  • Unemployment

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