The negotiation to reduce the working day goes from the social dialogue table to the streets. The UGT and the Workers’ Commissions announced this Wednesday the call to demonstrate in front of the employers’ headquarters in all the provincial capitals for next September 26, at 11:30 am. The unions are thus complying with the warning they had issued in July, when they informed the government and the CEOE that the conversations were “on a loop”.
Through a joint declaration, the majority unions launched an “appeal to employers’ organizations to opt for an agreement to achieve this reduction in working hours (weekly maximum)” from 40 to 37.5 and a half hours in 2025. “This measure will promote a better, co-responsible reconciliation between professional, social, personal and family life and will contribute to the creation and distribution of employment in our country” and “will serve to maintain and create more quality jobs”, they indicate.
The main objective of these mobilizations is to “raise awareness,” said the secretary general of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez. “The political parties, the parliamentary groups, must know that the vast majority of citizens want to live better, reduce working hours and that this will also lead to an improvement in terms of economic efficiency and job creation.” he said.
“In the last meetings, the negotiation to reduce the legal working day has been blocked. We have entered a loop,” lamented the general secretary of the CCOO, Unai Sordo, who indicated that the mobilizations aim to “unblock the situation at the tables.” The following day, the 26th, will be “the first milestone,” but not the only one. “We are not going to abandon our efforts to have the reduction of the legal working time, which we have already obtained in many collective agreements, published in the Official Gazette,” he warned.
For now, unions have already started to offer information on workplaces. “Especially those of these people who would benefit the most,” Sordo said. In total, this measure would reduce the legal working time by about 13 million people.
The unions had already indicated this Monday, at the end of the last meeting with the workers and the employers, that they maintained their intention to mobilize throughout this month. “The employers continue to deny the objective” and “show themselves to be totally uncertain about the possibility of negotiating the measures that are put on the table and that have the same objective, that are integrated into the reduction of working hours and in the negotiation.”, even verbalized the confederal secretary of Studies and Trade Union Training of the CCOO, Carlos Gutiérrez.
At this meeting, the ministry led by Second Vice President Yolanda Díaz presented several measures to try to attract businessmen to the agreement. Specifically, it offered hiring bonuses resulting from the reduction of working hours and a support plan for companies with fewer than 10 employees, which, according to data from the Executive, represent 90% of the total.
