The Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, issued an ultimatum to the employers this Wednesday, warning that “the next meeting (with employers and unions) to negotiate the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours, which will be held on Next October 29, it will be the last.” This warning is primarily directed at business organizations.which are the ones that to date have flatly refused to seal a social agreement to reduce the maximum legal working day from the current 40 hours per week to 37.5 hours in 2025.
Pérez Rey explained this Wednesday in the Labor Commission of the Congress of Deputies that his department “has tried everything” to reach an agreement with the employers on this matter without having been successful so far. What’s more, the number two of the vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, has advanced that, in that meeting on October 29, which would still be pending closure, the Government “will bring direct aid to productivity to the table for those sectors that may be further away from 37.5 hours, such as commerce, cleaning or hairdressers.”
These aids will be added to the so-called SME Plan 375, presented to the social agents in the last meeting of this negotiation and which consists of bonuses in Social Security contributions to companies with less than 10 workers and a turnover of less than two million for hiring or conversions of contracts to part-time to full-time that have been made to compensate for the legal reduction in working hours.
Thus, he added firmly: “What the Government will do at the next table on the 29th will be launch its last offer. What we will do is say: employers, union organizations, say once and for all whether this is valid or not valid to reach an agreement because, if it is not valid, the commitment of Labor is, with the citizens and also to strictly comply with the agreement of the Government of coalition, which states that the maximum legal working day will be 37.5 hours per week in 2025; and with or without agreement we are going to fulfill that commitment.”
Pérez Rey has insisted that after this latest offer, Labor negotiators will wait for the organizations to respond. “And if we can count on the employers, it will be great news for us and they will be very welcome to this agreement. But, if it is not possible, we will try to reach an agreement with the union organizations and strictly comply with the commitment to reduce the working day.” To this end, he has informed the deputies that in the event that a tripartite social agreement is not possible, the Government will immediately bring to Congress a bill to reduce the working day.
That said, he has tacitly reproached the employers’ position, suggesting that their refusal to seal an agreement on this matter is due to political rather than economic issues. “I hope that the business representatives dedicate themselves to what they have done all this time, to represent the interests of Spanish companies and not play to other interests that are further removed from representation and more linked to politics than anything else.” ”said Pérez Rey.
As the Secretary of State has justified, “reducing the working day is a measure of necessary labor democracy”, since according to his information “there are many workers who already work 37.5 hours and many other people, 12.5 million workers, who “They have not been able to include a shorter working day in their collective agreements.” But for this reason, he continued, “the reduction of working hours cannot be the exclusive property of banking workers, technology companies, and large companies. It must also be the heritage of hairdressers, of women who work in shops, of men who run pharmacies or of people who work in leisure or in a gym.
