PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo acknowledged on Tuesday that Spain has a “productivity problem” that the government must address and opened up to studying with social workers the four-day work week in “certain sectors” through “9” “days of one hour or 9.5 hours.”
In an interview in Critical View of Telecinco collected by Europe PressFeijóo announced that he would sit down with unions and employers to exchange opinions on the conciliation law that the PP wants to register as soon as possible in Parliament. In the framework of these meetings, he highlighted the possibility of also discussing issues such as the reduction of working hours.
“At the moment, Spain has a productivity problem“Our companies have lost productivity compared to the rest of the companies in the European Union. Therefore, the first thing we must seriously discuss with social agents is how to recover the productivity of our economy,” he said.
Furthermore, the PP president indicated that it is necessary to deal with social workers “how it is possible that they are at the maximum of temporary incapacity” and to spend “25 billion euros on temporary incapacity leave”.
“When I was president of Correos, I arrived at the company in 2000 with a temporary disability of 8%. I sat down with the unions and we lowered it to 4%,” he noted, adding that “there were 5,000 people missing from Correos every year.” days on average.” According to him, this is what “a president of the government should do.”
Feijóo stressed that when they talk about this “reduction of temporary disability“they can”in certain production sectors“Evaluate whether they can reduce the working week to four days. “We are open to the Spanish economy maintaining the productivity of the best countries in the European Union, reducing spending on temporary disability and, if possible, working fewer days a week. , we have the same productivity as if we worked the same way,” he said.
The PP leader thus opened the door to the four-day working week. “How can we do it? Can we work nine hours four days a week? Can we work nine and a half hours four days a week?“, he asked, adding that this would be possible in some productive sectors and not in others.
Of course, Feijóo stressed that the productivity of the economy must be “higher” than the interests of unions or companies. “The productivity of our economy is employment, which represents the income necessary to maintain public services. And public services are the fundamental pillars of freedom and equality of people,” he explained.
Free preschools
Feijóo stressed that the conciliation law that the PP will present to Congress is already “put into practice” in its autonomies. Thus, he said that for him it was “an honor to have been the first regional president to include free nursery schools within the framework of its LACC”, in Galicia in 2022.
As he added, the same thing is happening in Castile and León and the Valencian Community, and is helping to “better reconcile.” “It is a decision that is part of our electoral program and that is being implemented in the autonomous communities,” he said, to criticize the fact that the central government so far “has not put a euro” because it “prefers separatist quotas to nurseries.” schools. “Free.”
In addition, Feijóo accused the government of “increasing bureaucratic expenses by 5 billion euros.” “With this, we would finance 100% of the nursery schools in our country, there would already be 1 billion left. It is another way of understanding the management of things and public services,” he exclaimed.
Feijóo stressed that the PP proposes to extend maternity and paternity leave from 16 to 20 weeksallowing parents “to choose when they use this leave because the current law requires that for the first six weeks, both the father and mother are on leave simultaneously.” “We understand that the father and mother are already old enough to know when they want to use this authorization.”
