The Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, asked “not to play” with the health of workers, following the proposal this Thursday from the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, to reform temporary disability to make the return to work of people on sick leave more flexible, on a voluntary basis, and also “with an eye” on disability.
“There is only one reason behind temporary incapacity: to protect the health of workers. There are no other options or reasons. Neither flexibility nor partiality, we do not play with health“, Yolanda Díaz said in a message on her social networks.
In this way, the Minister of Labor expressed her rejection of the proposal made by Elma Saiz during a breakfast organized by Nueva Economía Fórum, where she expressed interest in opening a work table to discuss of this extent and assured that, thanks to advances in medicine and technology, there are people who, for example, come out of a cancer treatment process “who can perhaps, voluntarily and, of course, guaranteeing their health, return to work”.
The idea, explained the minister, is to modify the regulations to make them more flexible, as was done for the compatibility of work and retirement in the last agreement on pensions, because on this point the existing regulations ” was very abrupt” and “either you were a worker or you were retired.
Health calls for caution and does not exclude that the measure is beneficial
For his part, the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla (Más Madrid), defended temporary incapacity as “a clinical tool to take care of the health” of workers and warned of the danger of possible coercion in the “voluntary nature” of the measure proposed by Saiz.
“Any proposal related to this issue must have a fundamental objective: to improve the recovery and health care process of workers and avoid relapses of their processes that caused their disability,” Padilla indicated through a message on his social networks .
Likewise, while waiting to see the specific proposal, asked not to subject the health of workers to “labor criteria”.
However, he indicated that there are scenarios where this measure, “well implemented and with the worker at the center”, can be “beneficial”, such as in patients with nine months of sick leave due to a process of generalized anxiety or significant depression, for which fully integrating from the beginning may cause greater damage to your recovery than doing so partially and gradually.
Likewise, he indicated that the measure This may be beneficial for part-time workers with telecommuting and for other part-time workers with a physical load component.since there may be a handicapping process that allows the execution of one but not the other.
“If the measures put workers’ health at the center, they can be beneficial rights, otherwise we are entering dangerous territory,” he concluded.
Podemos describes this measure as a “bloody scandal”
Podemos also rejected the measure, which it called “fucking barbarity“and of”aberrant“. The proposal was not appreciated in the purple training environment, in whose official account the social network X the government is accused of advancing the “wet dream” of companies.
“There is only one reason behind temporary incapacity: to protect the health of workers. There are no other options or reasons. Neither flexibility nor partiality, we do not play with health“, Yolanda Díaz said in a message on her social networks.
