The president of the CEOE approves the conciliation law that the People’s Party submitted to the Congress of Deputies at the beginning of October. Antonio Garamendi aligns himself with Alberto Núñez and Feijóo and undertakes to bring to the collective bargaining table the reduction in working hours proposed by the popular parties. “We are open to discussion as long as it is done within the framework of this collective negotiation. I think it is in this sense”, declared the company manager, at the end of the meeting which he held this morning in Genoa with the leader of the opposition group. “This is not part of our law, we leave it in the hands of social agents,” added the spokesperson for the PP branch, Ana Alós.
Núñez Feijóo now offers a reduction in working hours “negotiated” between the company and employees. This is included in the bill that the Popular Party He plans to continue presenting CCOO this afternoon, and UGT and Cepyme tomorrow. The leader of the PP initially proposed moving towards a reduction of the working day to four days. “The medium-term goal is to achieve a Spain in which, working four days a week, we can have the same productivity as other countries in the world, which probably will too,” Feijóo said in an interview has Vanity Fair. A few days later, and after confirming the employers’ union’s rejection, the popular leader weakened his approach to finding an agreement with Garamendi. “We are not going to propose an imposition,” said Alós, who insisted that they would propose “surgical” advances to social agents. “We have not specified in the law that the day must be four days,” the popular deputy secretary responded to journalists’ questions.
That’s not the only issue the two men discussed during the meeting. The presidents of the PP and CEOE addressed the main challenges facing the labor market: slow progress in productivity and increasing absenteeism. A point, the latter, which this year causes a cost to public coffers of more than 2 billion euros, according to figures from the CEOE. Garamendi sees this as a fundamental factor in creating jobs and improving the economy. “We have to see how we can, together, how we can improve,” declared the president of the employers’ organization. “Productivity per worker fell by 1.9 points,” said Alós, who pointed out that Spain was lagging behind the rest of the EU.
Additionally, Feijóo outlined the rest of the articles of his conciliation law. “As far as the law goes, I think the term fits what collective bargaining is and suits us,” Garamendi added. The text promises to create a “bank of hours” so that workers can use it “according to the needs of their family”. A question that Núñez Feijóo already transmitted a few weeks ago to Garamendi, during the informal meeting they had three weeks ago, and that the PP will also leave in the hands of employers and unions. In addition, the leader of the CEOE welcomed the free education from 0 to 3 years that the popular initiative includes. This is not the only problem.
Finally, the document proposes tax advantages to facilitate the return to work of women who have left their jobs by requesting leave to care for children or family members. Concretely, it provides that self-employed women can benefit from an exemption from social security contributions for up to two years.
