In the art of shaping public opinion, businessmen and their usual media trumpet have decided that reducing the workday will bring the Apocalypse, but they are not talking about the 2.61 million hours worked and unpaid per week, which represents a labor cost of 3.254 million unpaid in terms of gross salary and social contributions
The OECD has positioned Spain as the engine of a euro zone weighed down by Pyrrhic growth. Inflation in our country fell for the fourth consecutive month, falling to 1.5% in September. This is the lowest figure in three and a half years, mainly due to cheaper fuel, food and electricity prices. But that doesn’t matter. Everything is bad. Still bad. No journalistic format has devoted the same space to this data as the one which occupied these 10% of the CPI two years ago – the highest since 1984. Pages and pages, news covers, radio minutes and television, discussion tables…
In the United States it is called agenda setting and it is the theory that the media are the ones who determine which issues are of media interest and how much leeway they are given to influence the public agenda. American academics Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw coined the term in the 1970s by demonstrating that the public tends to value issues based on the frequency and depth with which they are covered in the media. It is, in short, the art of shaping public perception by selecting and amplifying certain issues while silencing or downplaying others. Some do it more than others. And there are even those who insist with so much intrepidity that it borders on ridiculousness. Search, compare and check how much space the media open every day with the judicial investigation into the professional activity of the wife of the President of the Government dedicated to covering the crimes of tax evasion and falsification of documents committed by the boyfriend of Isabel Diaz Ayuso. This is a clear example of what is important to convey and what should remain silent.
These days, Spain is sinking again because the government, following the mandate from Brussels, has put an end to the reduction of VAT on food products, a measure adopted in the midst of an inflationary escalation after the outbreak of war in Ukraine which, in one way or another, was ignored in its time by the very people who today consider it essential for national economies. We almost never talk about wage increases and the loss of workers’ purchasing power as corporate profits quintuple. Of course, this is not the case with the businessmen who, accompanied by the media trumpeter on duty, shouted to the sky with the proposal of the Ministry of Labor to reduce the working day to 37.5 hours per week against 40 hours currently.
The measure appears on page 11 of the agreement signed by the PSOE and Sumar for the formation of the coalition government. In France, it has been in force since 1999, not for the 37.5 hour day, but for the 35 hour day. And the same in Iceland. In Belgium, it is 38 hours. In Denmark, 37.2. In the Netherlands, 38.3. And, in Norway of 38….
But here, if the government respects its commitments, the economy will collapse, thousands of businesses will be ruined and the Apocalypse will arrive. The usual. They said the same thing with the rise of the SMI and with the repeal of the labor reform which restored worker rights, but the cataclysm never arrived.
Today we read and listen to pages and reports of information containing testimonies from businessmen and expert economists who denounce this measure, while insulting the government, Vice President Yolanda Díaz, unions and, if necessary, workers, those who blame the high rate of absenteeism at work.
In a blatant attempt to hide the reality, it is deliberately hidden that the reduction in working hours is in line with that of most neighboring countries; that nearly 13 million private sector workers will benefit; that the measure improves business productivity; which contributes to advancing effective equality between men and women or which is a matter of social justice.
They decided that what matters is not social progress, nor the health of workers, nor conciliation, but rather that there be a progressive government that wants to crack down on entrepreneurs. Businessmen who, moreover, never make the headlines for the abuse of unpaid overtime in Spain. There are 2.61 million of them per week and represent an unpaid salary cost of 3.254 million in terms of gross salary and social security contributions.
Each person exploited with overtime works 6.3 hours each week unpaid by their employer. But that is the art of shaping public opinion. Although this practice is a very common abuse for hundreds of thousands of workers and is a form of labor exploitation, you won’t see it on the front pages, in newspapers, or on television talk shows. . And there is a specific rule that requires registration of the working day and anything over 40 hours today is illegal.
Although they scream, Yolanda Díaz is right when she says that if there is no agreement at the social dialogue table to reduce the working day, the government will act. It was already time.
