Labor, unions and employers have been negotiating a reduction in the maximum weekly working day for more than nine months with little progress. Time begins to run out. Businessmen continue to reject a measure that they consider imposed. With this backdrop, the department commanded by Yolanda Díaz has issued a warning to the employers. The offer to subsidize hiring made by microSMEs as a result of the reduction in working hours is subject to CEOE joining the agreement.
Otherwise, Labor would seek an agreement only with the unions that does not have to include the same menu of proposals that are currently on the table. Díaz highlighted that smaller SMEs need support. Immediately afterwards, he recalled that, when the last increase in the SMI was negotiated, Labor offered the employers a 4% increase if they joined the pact. Since he did not do so, the final increase was 5%. “The employers decided to do other things. They preferred not to sign an agreement and for us to raise the SMI more,” Díaz said.
Using an analogy with that situation, the vice president has called on businessmen to decide “if they want us to go down this path” (that is, the path of incentives). Or, on the other hand, “they want the path of strict application of the law” (that is, the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours without additions), Díaz said. Social dialogue, he added, “has to have incentives and has to be treated with respect.”
The agreement “is possible,” the vice president has stressed on several occasions. “Businessmen know this perfectly well. The question is whether the management of the employers’ association is going to make an SMI or is willing to negotiate,” he added. “The employers have to explain whether they are going to live up to their country or not,” Díaz concluded.
The incentives to which the Minister of Labor refers is the proposal that her department has launched so that microSMEs can access bonuses on the contributions they pay to Social Security for contracts signed to reinforce staff due to reduced working hours. To this possibility, Labor has been adding other flexibility measures, such as more room to irregularly distribute the working day in 2025.
The text contained in the government agreement between PSOE and Sumar reflected that the cut in working hours had to occur in two phases. A first decrease from the current maximum 40 hours to 38.5 in 2024 and another to 37.5 next year. Given the limited time margin, Díaz’s department decided to renounce the intermediate step of 2024 and go directly for 37.5 hours in 2025.
