The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, continued his meetings with social agents to talk about the changes that the country needs in socio-work matters. Gerardo Cuerva, president of the employers’ association that represents small and medium-sized businesses (Cepyme), held a meeting in Genoa with the popular leader a day after the president of the employers’ association CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, and in turn before the UGT union. The PP reiterated its desire to delegate negotiations on the reduction of working hours to social agents through collective agreements. Popular training and Cepyme agree on the current problems of SMEs, in a context of higher costs and lower productivity which make them less competitive.
Regarding the reduction of working hours, Cuerva said after the Genoa meeting that “we cannot distribute what we are not capable of generating and, therefore, we must take into account the situation.” He says SMEs are mired in a spiral of costs and low productivity. “We have experienced six consecutive quarters in which the Spanish SME continues to lose productivity,” explains Cuerva.
Regarding the productivity challenge, he states that “a worker in Spain is 40% less productive than a Danish worker” and this gap makes the predominant company in the Spanish productive fabric less competitive. He considers “absenteeism or productivity” as fundamental pillars “always within the framework of social dialogue, I think this is the appropriate path that this country should follow,” he explains.
Cepyme would even be open to evaluating any changes to the day, as long as social dialogue is taken into account. But he warns that productivity cannot be ignored to talk about reducing working hours or improving work-life balance: “That would be deluding us,” he says.
He took advantage of his intervention to accusation against Díaz and his “imposition” of the weekly reduction of hours outside social agentsensuring that it does not take into account the economic impact. “Let’s do things the way I think they should be done. With a beginning and an end,” he comments.
