This Monday, the Government resumed negotiations with social agents for the reduction of working hours. The Ministry of Labor has proposed to employers, reluctant to reduce working hours, a support plan for small businesses and bonuses for companies with fewer than 10 employees that must hire to apply the 37.5 weekly hours that the agreement between the PSOE and Sumar has committed to respect. 2025.
“This table has already made a lot of progress,” said the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, at the end of the meeting. “The government is making a huge effort to adapt these measures to the reality” of the Spanish productive fabric, he defended. According to data from the ministry, 90% of Spanish companies employ fewer than 10 people, which represents a total of 3.5 million jobs.
“We know very well that the reduction in working hours already benefits many workers, civil servants, bank staff, many staff in the telecommunications sector or large companies, but that is not enough,” said the Secretary of State for Employment. has chosen to “democratize time, which cannot be the prerogative of certain sectors.” In total, the measure would benefit some 13 million workers.
The new Labour proposal to attract employers to the agreement is to offer bonuses to companies with fewer than 10 workers that have to hire due to the reduction in working hours. For the moment, the only condition would be that these are permanent contracts, but Pérez Rey indicated that the ministry remains open to contributions from social agents, especially from organizations that represent SMEs and the self-employed at the negotiating table. “It is not a closed element,” he stressed.
In addition, the government has proposed a “support system for small business owners.” A “SME 37.5 plan” with which the ministry wants to “guide, train and advise” through the orientation and employment centers financed by European funds. “We are going to disseminate and produce technical guides, mainly by sector, to be able to support this transition of small businesses,” explained Pérez Rey. Among the support measures for businesses, advice on time recording is also included, another of the components, along with digital disconnection, of negotiation.
The ministry emphasizes that this measure will contribute to “creating jobs, improving productivity and generating free time, which will benefit these companies.” “Not all the time freed up by the reduction in working hours will be spent on a new job,” acknowledged Yolanda Díaz’s number 2, because companies “will improve their productivity.”
The Secretary of State praised the “more constructive spirit” of the employers’ union at the social dialogue table this Monday. In the absence of the ministry sending the complete document to the unions and employers, the latter would have committed “to examine and study it”. “I understand this with the aim of reaching an agreement or establishing alternatives,” Pérez Rey stressed.
Unions maintain mobilizations
The unions are less optimistic, as they will maintain the announced mobilization schedule starting this month. “The employers continue to deny the objective,” lamented the confederal secretary of Studies and Trade Union Training of CCOO, Carlos Gutiérrez. “There is a total lack of definition regarding the possibility of negotiating the measures that are put on the table and that have the same objective, that is, that they are integrated into the reduction of working time and into the negotiation,” he said.
The UGT’s deputy secretary general for trade union policy, Fernando Luján, acknowledged that “all measures” were being taken to ensure that employers adhere to this “demand from Spanish society”, but he also placed emphasis on the political parties. must approve the measure in Parliament. “They are the beneficiaries of popular sovereignty and cannot oppose the people they claim to represent,” he said. For this reason, the mobilization calendar will also include the message aimed at political groups: “we must move.”
The coalition agreement between the PSOE and Sumar envisaged a reduction in the maximum weekly working day from the current 40 hours to 38.5 hours in 2024 and 37.5 hours in 2025. The timetable for complying with the first part of the agreement is already very tight, although Labour hopes to reduce this year the proportional share in the annual calculation for the “few months remaining in 2024”. “Sweating our shirts and not leaving the table until we reach an agreement is worth this slight delay,” Pérez Rey defended.
