The extraordinary Executive Committee of the CEOE, meeting this Tuesday, November 5, unanimously rejected the proposal from the Ministry of Labor to reduce working hours. In a press release sent this Tuesday and announced by EFE, the CEOE reports that “the CEOE and the CEPYME, due to their responsibility, cannot support this proposal” aimed at reducing the maximum legal working day from 40 hours per week to 37, 5 hours in 2025.
The Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, once again called on employers on Tuesday to participate in what will be “a great pact for the country” and asked them to exercise pragmatism. It seems, he adds, that it is “more attached to political considerations than to effective representation of companies”. “I would like the great negotiating effort of the Labor Party to be valued,” insisted Pérez Rey. Labor insisted it would make the cut with or without employers’ agreement.
For employers, “modifying by law issues which are the subject of collective agreements, such as the reduction of working hours, and which, in fact, are already agreed bilaterally in the agreements, represents a interference in the autonomy of collective bargaining”. This autonomy, they add, is included in article 37.1 of the Constitution, which says that “the law will guarantee the right to collective bargaining between representatives of workers and employers, as well as the binding force of agreements.”
For this reason, the CEOE considers that the reduction of working hours weakens the collective bargaining framework “which has been fundamental to maintaining social peace over the last 40 years”. Likewise, “this leads many companies, particularly SMEs and the self-employed, to a forced reorganization this will test their capacity for internal organization and survival,” he emphasizes.
The CEOE and the CEPYME specify that productivity will “hardly” increase with the reduction of working hours in a productive fabric composed of 98% SMEs and self-employed people, and where the sectors which contribute the most to GDP are linked, among which others, to services or tourism.
On the other hand, they consider that the adoption of such measures, in general, does not make sense if we take into account the enormous differences that exist between the different economic sectors and between the autonomous communities. This Tuesday’s meeting focused mainly on how to collaborate, through businesses and social dialogue, for human and economic support to the victims of DANA, added the CEOE.
