Alejandra Olcese
Updated Thursday, February 8, 2024-02:08
Employer Negotiation and unions slam the door on the Government and will negotiate the reduction of working hours on their own
In 2024 the Government activates the plan to reduce the working day to 38.5 hours per week, which will affect 55% of workers
CEOE, Cepyme, UGT and CCOO
agreed this Tuesday in their
first bipartite meeting
to address the
reduction of working hours
that any change made to working time in Spain must be considered in terms of
annual working hours
and not by setting working hours. maximum per week as intended by the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, who wants to limit weekly working time to a maximum of 37.5 hours starting in 2025.
As EL MUNDO has learned from sources familiar with these conversations, in this first meeting held this Tuesday morning the social agents have stipulated that, given that all the country's collective agreements and jurisprudence consider the working day in annual terms,
It makes no sense now to set a maximum working day per week,
which would result in a decrease in the productivity of companies and would make their production conditions more difficult, making them much less competitive.
In this way, the idea is to reduce the maximum annual working day, so that
the average weekly working time is lower
, but that does not mean that those workers who have, for example, an 8-hour shift per day five days a week the week - and work in computing 40 hours a week - go to work now half an hour less a day. The solution will be to
increase your vacation days or allowances
, so that your annual working hours are reduced.
To know more
Labor.
The trickle of Yolanda Díaz's ads in the campaign slows down collective bargaining and investment
Editor: ALEJANDRA OLCESE
The trickle of Yolanda Díaz's ads in the campaign slows down collective bargaining and investment
Companies will thus maintain their
flexibility
to stipulate the shifts or work organization that best suits them, but they will have to reduce the maximum annual working time of their employees. Right now the average annual working day agreed in Spain is 1,752 hours per year (the equivalent of weekly working hours of 38.2 hours), so this would have to drop to around 1,720 hours for the weekly average to drop to 37.5 hours. Traditionally this has been the formula used in collective bargaining, since many agreements have agreed on cuts in annual working time as these sectors gained
productivity
.
The latter is precisely one of the keys: companies usually reduce working hours when they manage to be more productive, while the reverse rarely happens.
Reducing the working day while maintaining the salary
without guaranteeing an improvement in productivity would directly translate into a drop in production and economic growth.
Both employers and unions understand that for the second vice president,
Yolanda Díaz
, who is now campaigning for the elections in Galicia, it is more profitable to launch the headline that Spaniards will work a maximum of 37.5 hours per week, but the truth is that This will not be able to be established by law - or not, at least, in a law supported by social dialogue. The social agents point out that this reference will foreseeably be relegated to appearing in the
preamble
of the norm by which it is regulated, but that in no case will the articles include any weekly limit.
In addition to addressing the maximum annual working day by sector, the social agents will talk in these meetings - set on one day a week - about
other matters
such as the limits of the day, breaks between days, special days regulated in some sectors with different regulations, permits and rest times, irregular distribution of the day and even work absenteeism.
Tighten time control
The Government has already warned that along with this reduction it was necessary to rethink the
time control system,
but this is a matter that has not yet been raised at the bipartite table and that it makes more sense to undertake with the Executive, which is the one who has the tools. to tighten this registry or intensify surveillance by the
Labor
Inspection .
Although the reduction of the working day is Díaz's star measure in this legislature and one of the achievements that he wants to champion in the Galician elections, employers and unions
have decided that it is a matter that they must negotiate on their own
, as stipulated in the Statute of Workers, among other things because both parties believe that it will be easier for them to understand each other and reach agreements if the Ministry of Labor does not intervene.
The Secretary of State for Employment,
Joaquín Pérez-Rey,
has said publicly that it is not a rupture, since the Government will negotiate "in parallel" with all the interlocutors and will closely monitor how their conversations evolve, but the truth is that CEOE, Cepyme, UGT and CCOO prefer to organize and advance on their own, out of focus, since these meetings are held discreetly and without being part of the negotiators' public agenda.
What is sought, among other things, is a climate of tranquility that avoids public statements after each meeting, as happens in those held in the Ministry, in which in the end headlines and grandiose statements take precedence over real progress. and in which few roles have been shared lately for fear of leaks.
Although the representatives of the companies and workers want to dialogue independently and at their own pace, the Ministry is in a hurry and wants
the agreement to be reached as soon as possible
in order to accelerate regulatory change. In fact, in the investiture pact between PSOE and Sumar, it was stated that the working day would go to 38.5 hours in 2024 and then decrease to 37.5 next year. In the event that the social dialogue is delayed or if the agreement reached is not to the Government's liking, it could bring the reduction to a standard and try to push it forward in Parliament, something that would be complicated without the support of the social agents and given the importance of the measure.