Either employers reach an agreement on the reduction of the working day, or its implementation will cost small businesses more. This is the message that the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, sent this Thursday to the CEOE. Díaz called on employers to make a decision. “If the management of the employers’ association wants to set a minimum wage, which will harm businesses, or is it ready to negotiate,” Díaz emphasized.
The Ministry of Labor has proposed to employers a support plan for small businesses, the PME 375 plan, with assistance in social security contributions for companies with fewer than 10 workers that hire due to the application of the reduction of working hours of work at 37 and a half hours. per week, or convert contracts to part-time.
However, the offer put on the table by Labor, also including training aid and support plans for SMEs, is subject to negotiation by employers. If employers do not adhere to a tripartite pact, the ministry will seek another pact. This time only with the unions.
“In social dialogue, there is no veto”
The second vice-president stressed that social dialogue “must be incentive”. “We take this very seriously. “There is no veto in social dialogue,” he insisted.
Yolanda Díaz said that many companies with “less than five workers” need accompanying measures to implement the reduction in working hours. So the Labor leader argued that employers must decide “whether they want us to go down this path”. [el de las ayudas] or if they simply want to take the route of strict law enforcement.
As an executive, Díaz recalled that Labor was prepared to increase the minimum wage by 4% last year if employers reached a tripartite agreement. In the absence of an agreement, the government only agreed to the increase with the unions and the minimum wage increased by 5%. “Employers preferred to do something else, of course it seems that this did not benefit businessmen and women,” criticized Yolanda Díaz.
International Labor Congress
Yolanda Díaz’s statements took place during the presentation of the Ministry of the International Labor Congress, an event that will bring together in Madrid on November 13 and 14 “ministers of Labor from different continents, representatives of trade union organizations, European Union (EU), experts on the subject and intellectuals from different countries around the world engaged in the defense of labor rights,” Trabajo reported.
The challenges posed in the workplace by “algorithmic slavery, the protection of union power or the imperative progress of democracy at work” will be addressed. They also have how to strengthen social dialogue and “how to depatriarchalize the world of work or constitute a front that unites workers from the South and the North, identifying priorities for action for the protection and expansion of labor rights in the world “. » added the ministry.
“Madrid will become the world capital of decent work,” said the second vice-president about this event which will be attended by a dozen labor ministers from countries such as Belgium, Cape Verde, Colombia, Slovenia, Guatemala , Honduras and Nepal. , Palestine, Senegal or South Africa, as well as former holders of this portfolio from Argentina, Italy and Portugal, among others.
“Experts from civil society such as jurists or intellectuals like Owen Jones, Catherine Barnard, Paris Marx, Laura Calafà or Remedios Zafra, among others, will also participate,” they explained in Díaz’s department.
