The reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours per week, the great project that the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, had proposed to promote this legislature, fails due to the lack of agreement at the dialogue table social and the absence of figures to deal with it in the Congress of Deputies. Those of Carles Puigdemont threaten to abandon the measure in the Lower House, thus aligning themselves with the Catalan employers’ associations, which also reject the reduction in working hours proposed by Sumar. The latter party’s room for maneuver is also minimal at the moment, after its successive electoral failures and the scandals which now besiege it.
Foment del Treball and Pimec expressed their “no” to the measure to Yolanda Díaz last month, during the series of contacts that the second vice president initiated with unions and businessmen in Barcelona. Junts listened to the organization led by Josep Sánchez Llibre and has already warned the leader of the Labor Party that “don’t take your vote for granted”. In fact, the ministry and the unions take the vote against the postconvergent.
Frustration with the failure of the standard was felt, particularly within the UGT. “I live in Barcelona and this story of getting up in the morning denying everything Spanish and then meeting the most rancid businessmen in this country to agree on a measure that does not benefit precisely to the majority of Spaniards and certainly does not benefit us Catalans either “Well, it seems to me that we will surely have to start explaining it in Catalonia”, said Pepe Álvarez a few weeks ago about. from Junts’ position.
But all is not lost for the coalition partner. In recent weeks, the PNV, initially wary, confirmed that it would vote for it. “In principle, we would vote yes,” admitted the president of the Basque nationalists, Andoni Ortuzar, in statements to TVE. Even so, without Junts, the rule by which Díaz has been trying to reach consensus for almost a year will not prosper.
As a last option, Labor will try to seek abstention from the People’s Party. The opposition leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, publicly expressed his support for a reduction of the working day to four days, although – after an informal meeting with the CEOE – he backtracked and chose to leave this reduction of working time in the hands of companies and workers. At this point, Sumar could attempt a siege against the popular group, assimilating some of the measures that Feijóo included in his proposed conciliation law, in the form of amendments to the text. It would not be the first time that Sumar and the PP have agreed on initiatives in the Congress of Deputies and signed a strategic alliance. Sánchez’s coalition partners voted to authorize new defense missions abroad, outside of the PSOE. The most popular ones did the same with a Sumar initiative on mortgage clauses.
Until then, Labor will seek a last-minute deal with employers. Today, Díaz’s people will make a final attempt to straighten out the negotiations they are sharing with social agents by issuing an ultimatum to the CEOE. If employers do not accept it, the ministry will sign the agreement alone with the unions. “We will bring the last offer to the table on the 29th, we will wait for the organizations to respond to us, and if we can count on the employers it will be great news for us, but if we cannot count on them we will try to reach an agreement with the union organizations,” said Diaz’s number two, Joaquín Pérez Rey, on Sunday. “I don’t like ultimatums,” CEOE leader Antonio Garamendi responded shortly after.
