Experts and business sources consulted by elEconomista.es They are unanimous when it comes to criticizing the PP’s proposal to establish a four-day work week. The most popular ones introduce several safeguards into their initiative, such as total flexibility in negotiations between companies and workers. –and in the application by sectors–, in addition to closely monitoring that there is no damage to productivity. Nevertheless, The opinions consulted agree on the fact that the damage inflicted precisely on this last variable, the traditional Achilles heel of the Spanish economy compared to its comparables, would be inevitable..
In the business world, in addition to criticizing the fact that the PP has not yet detailed its proposal to employers, they consider “erroneous” the assertion that a day of 9.5 to 10 hours from Monday to Thursday does not reduce hourly and daily output. worker. These same sources also consider it very difficult to negotiate with “total flexibility” between company and employee for the redistribution of working time.
Ángel de la Fuente, director of Fedeaalso acknowledges that he needs to know more details about the popular proposal to reduce the working day to four days: “I’m not very sure I understand the details,” he comments. In any case, De la Fuente anticipates a worrying decline in activity: “If fewer and fewer people worked on Fridays, what would we do, close the country?” he asks. De la Fuente also warns that many companies would be forced to hire more staff in the medium or long term, which could generate additional complications in their internal organization.
For his part, Francisco de la Torre, economist and Treasury inspector He emphasizes that a priori “long days are never a good idea. It is inevitable that performance will eventually be reduced.” Spain has a productivity problem and “I think this proposal will not solve this problem.” On the other hand, “we should give more room to agreement between companies and workers, rather than making this type of proposal in a law”, he adds.
In this same line, Javier Santacruz, financial analyst and university professor, He is also radically opposed to it since “the ‘redistribution of hours proposed by the PP now seems to me a monumental absurdity.'” Our problem is not a problem of distribution of hours but rather of efficiency per hour worked. We are a disaster there,” he said.
“We work many hours and we do it in a very unproductive way, and in many professions and industries this can be made worse by cramming the hours into four days.” Santacruz considers that this is a very old idea, which can date back to the 18th century, for The wealth of nations of Adam Smith, and led to a misinterpretation of the principle of division of labor.
Gonzalo Gómez de la Calle, professor of economics at Comillas Icadeconsiders that the concentration of the working day has several disadvantages. Above all, he fears that, despite the flexibility promised by the PP, the adaptation of the measure to different sectors will be much more complex in practice.”
Damage to SMEs
But it also “presents considerable risk and danger for SMEs and other businesses where competitiveness is particularly needed.” “Current concentration is detrimental to a country like Spain which suffers from the phenomenon of inverse productivity.” In other words, the professor argues that when GDP increases, paradoxically our productivity decreases, because most of the services or sectors that are contracted are those that require or require high labor intensity and are services with low added value.
Florentino Felgueroso, associate researcher at Fedeabelieves that it is difficult to have a clear vision without more details on how this reduction in working time would be implemented. Felgueroso explains that they must clarify why and why this measure is being taken. “We have to assess the intention. If they say it is to achieve greater conciliation, we will have to see how it is organized.” The expert mentions to elEconomista.es the possibility that with a four-day week without reduction in the number of hours, “there will be four days with many more working hours”, which would have an impact on output workers.
Furthermore, he warns that “if the objective is to distribute employment”, it would be necessary to assess which sectors could hire more staff to cover this additional day of rest. “What is clear is that under no circumstances can we offer coffee to everyone,” he concludes, emphasizing the need for more details and clarity in the objectives to be achieved with this measure.
Valentín Pich, president of the General Council of Colleges of Economists in Spain, She also expresses concern, warning that this may generate a negative view of the work. He notes that young people may feel pressured to work fewer hours and days, which he sees as problematic. Pich emphasizes that, although conciliation is important, it must be adapted to the characteristics of each sector.
Santiago Sánchez, economist and professor at UCAV, believes that the government’s proposal responds more to the political need to differentiate itself from Yolanda Díaz than to an economic criterion and that it has a strong political connotation. Sánchez criticizes the fact that reducing the working day without adjusting wages is an ideological error that does not generate jobs, but rather distributes them, which could impoverish society and increase labor costs, particularly affecting small businesses . Furthermore, he agrees with his colleagues that not all companies are the same and that applying a uniform measure without taking into account differences in productivity is a mistake. He says the key to improving working conditions is to increase productivity through innovation, adapting each company to its context. Furthermore, he argues that the decision regarding the working day should be agreed between companies and workers, and not imposed by the government, with respect for collective bargaining.
On the other hand, Manuel M. Molina López, vice dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business and co-director of the CEU-CEPSA Digita ChairL, considers that the PP proposal is interesting, “to the extent that it does not affect elements such as competitiveness and productivity”. Properly considered, “concentrating the workday over four days could even lead to fixed cost savings for businesses (reduced spending on supplies).”
However, the statistics confirm the unanimous concern of experts about Spanish productivity. Since 2015, the growth of this variable in our country has been 2.5%, compared to 4.7% in the countries of the European Union, which shows a growing distance. During one of the sessions organized by Fedea and the General College of Economists a few months ago, the 50% increase in the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) over the last five years was highlighted as problematic, while the productivity stagnates.
In addition, productivity has fallen in almost all sectors compared to the European average, except in agriculture, where Spain exceeds the Twenty-Seven average by 14%.
Current legislation already envisages the possibility for companies and their workers to agree on compacted working hours in Spain, in a type of policy similar to that currently proposed by the PP, but this flexibility does not solve the productivity problem .
