The PNV tightens the Government with the labor reform and the minimum vital income

The PNV spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies, Aitor Esteban, in front of the PNV president, Andoni Ortuzar, at the Vitoria train station on January 3 IÑAKÍ BERASALUCE EUROPA PRESS (Europa Press)

Ciudadanos accentuates every day the willingness to support the labor reform if the Government ignores its usual parliamentary partners. Inés Arrimadas said it on Monday and her spokesperson in Congress, Edmundo Bal, remarked it on Tuesday. The problem for the Executive is that the favorable vote of the liberal formation would not be enough if it were not accompanied by the abstention of some of its allies in Congress, where the validation of the reform decree will be voted on February 3. And the PNV, to which the government itself awards the category of preferred partner, already warned this Tuesday not to count on them for a possible tactical abstention.

The nationalist deputy Josune Gorospe could not be clearer. In an interview in Onda Vasca, he pointed out that if the Government does not agree to his request to give prevalence to the autonomous labor agreements over the state ones, the PNV will vote against the reform. Gorospe expressly ruled out that his party could abstain to facilitate approval without giving him express support. The same position is maintained, for the moment, by ERC and EH Bildu, on whom the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, tried to put pressure on them again on Tuesday: "To vote against this reform is to vote in favor of the PP."

The PNV has started the year with a tone of resentment towards the Government. In addition to the labor reform, the nationalists demand that the transfer to Euskadi of the management of the vital minimum income be completed once and for all, a claim that the Executive has already promised to address several times over the last year and a half. The PNV announces that it will "set foot on the wall" to ensure that the transfer is carried out in a "complete and transparent" way.

The Citizens option was handled by the socialist part of the Government as an alternative in the event of not reaching an agreement with their usual partners. At the moment the Executive has not spoken with the liberal formation, whose spokesman, Edmundo Bal, believes that the PSOE "is waiting to see if the negotiations with the nationalists fail." Even adding the nine votes of Ciudadanos, along with those of other formations inclined to support the reform, such as PDeCAT, PRC and the Canarian regionalists, the Executive would have very difficult to achieve a majority in the face of the crossed rejection of all the nationalists and the right wing.

In the negotiation with ERC, PNV and EH Bildu, Vice President Yolanda Díaz and her team at the Ministry of Labor, responsible for the labor reform, who already maintain intense contacts with representatives of these groups, are turning. Government interlocutors convey that so far no progress has been made, but Labor insists that there is room to untangle the knot.

Díaz boasted this Thursday of the "international repercussion" that the reform is having, especially in one country, Brazil. There it has been taken as a flag by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the favorite to unseat the far-right Jair Bolsonaro in the elections next October. In Brazil, a center-right government approved in 2017 an inspired labor reform, according to its own authors, in which the PP had imposed in Spain five years earlier. Lula, from the Workers' Party, has promised to reverse it and has enthusiastically welcomed the initiative of the Pedro Sánchez government, whom he publicly congratulated days ago. The matter has attracted numerous comments in the Brazilian press.

Lula held a telematic meeting on Tuesday with the Minister of Inclusion and Social Security, José Luis Escrivá, and the Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, Adriana Lastra, to learn about the contents of the reform.

The former president and his Workers Party, the great formation of the Brazilian left, have also shown great interest in the law that the Ministry of Labor agreed with unions and businessmen to regulate the work of