“The status of trainees cries to heaven,” criticized the leader of the CCOO, Unai Sordo on Monday, when asked about the recovery of this measure by the Ministry of Labor, which has still not reached an agreement within the government coalition . Sordo warned that the union would not renegotiate the regulation granting more rights to the scholarship holders and demanded that the executive approve what was agreed with the Ministry of Labor more than a year ago.
The status of scholarships, agreed by Labor and the majority unions (CCOO and UGT) in June 2023, consists of a catalog of basic rights for students doing internships, such as compensation for expenses, vacations and breaks like the rest of the students. staff, “adequate tutoring” of students or the protection of their health, among others. It also includes more limits on its use, in number of fellows and internship hours, as well as specific sanctions for entities that do not respect the rights of fellows.
“We signed it at the end of the previous legislature and the only thing we will say is that we demand exhaustive and exact compliance with what we agreed on,” Unai Sordo said during an informative breakfast organized by Nueva Economía Fórum.
Sordo points the finger at the “lobby” against
After the agreement with the Labor Party, the ministry led by Yolanda Díaz failed to present it to the Council of Ministers, due to the reluctance of the socialist part of the government (expressed by the Treasury and Economy), which stated that the standard still needed work. Meanwhile, universities and business foundations have warned that compensating students’ expenses poses a “serious danger” to scholarships, and the government also appears to have failed to secure support from some of its parliamentary partners, such as the PNV.
A few weeks ago, the Ministry of Labor again submitted to the public the status of the exchanges, with the intention of reactivating the regulation, but once again there is reluctance towards the rule within of the government, as published by El País and confirmed by government sources. .to this media.
“We are not going to renegotiate any of the issues that we have already negotiated,” warned Unai Sordo. “The only thing we ask of the government is to implement what we have agreed. I insist: cry to heaven.
The CCOO leader pointed the finger at some of the forces working to prevent the law from being implemented. “I know that this is an issue in which there is a lot of pressure, there is a lot of work entrance halluniversities themselves, for example. But this does not allow any further delay and we are not going to renegotiate anything,” he concluded.
Licensing and rights in the face of digitalization
The union leader analyzed some of the main current issues during the Forum Nueva Economía breakfast, such as the reduction of maximum working hours, problems of access to housing, the arrival of migrants in the country or the debate on financing and territorial taxation.
Unai Sordo also proposed two other measures for the future of the labor market. On the one hand, increasing the obstacles to layoffs, as a complementary measure to the ERTE, which affects a strategy that avoids layoffs in the face of future crises and possible business problems. As an alternative, he suggests offering companies “alternative working time flexibility formulas”.
On the other hand, the CCOO leader called for more regulation on what concerns “the emergence of digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence”, among other new technologies. “The disruptive risk that new technologies pose to working conditions is potentially immense,” he warned.
Although the so-called Rider law has already been approved, to combat the false independent work of delivery workers on digital platforms such as Glovo and guarantee unions’ access to information on the algorithms that define working conditions, the leader of CCOO proposed to expand the legislation. “We must regulate,” Sordo insisted. “We have taken a step in Spain, with the so-called riders’ law, (…) but we have done it in a very initiatory way and for a small part of the workers today linked to the platform economy, it We still have a lot to do in this area.”
