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Sánchez demands that the employers accept what they agree with ERC and PNV

2022-01-24T21:39:38.090Z


The vice president negotiates an agreement outside the reform text with the investiture majority Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz, on December 2 in Congress. Rodrigo Jimenez (EFE) The search for support to validate the labor reform decree, which is voted on February 3, is more advanced than it seems. The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, is looking for formulas with the ERC and the PNV that imply not touching a comma of the decree for the vote on day 3, as required by the PSOE and especiall


Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz, on December 2 in Congress. Rodrigo Jimenez (EFE)

The search for support to validate the labor reform decree, which is voted on February 3, is more advanced than it seems.

The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, is looking for formulas with the ERC and the PNV that imply not touching a comma of the decree for the vote on day 3, as required by the PSOE and especially the employers, but at the same time give guarantees to the partners of that later some progress can be made on issues that have been left out of this reform and that are important for both the PNV and the ERC, key with their 6 and 13 seats, respectively.

The exchange of roles is intense, according to Republican sources, and this week seems to be the definitive one, because ERC did not want to drag out the negotiation until the end like other times.

However, the negotiation has a very clear limit, which has been set by Pedro Sánchez and his team, especially Félix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency, to Vice President Díaz: anything that is agreed with the ERC and PNV, not for this reform but for the future, it has to be assumed by the CEOE as something that does not affect the labor reform agreement, that is, that the employers are clear that what is signed does not touch the text endorsed by them and the unions at the end from last year and it does not harm it in any way because it does not refer to things negotiated there.

The Socialists fear that the group led by Antonio Garamendi could use this negotiation as an excuse to get out of an agreement that was very difficult to forge and that has some internal criticism.

And they want to close that possibility as it is.

For this reason, if the employers put the agreement on the labor reform at risk because of what Díaz can negotiate with the ERC or PNV, the pact with these groups will not be valid for the socialist party and, therefore, it would go back, according to government sources. .

A scenario of this type, which in United We Can not contemplate because they believe that they will be able to convince the PNV and ERC without the bosses leaving the pact, would cause very strong tension within the coalition government.

Similar to the one in 2020, when the socialists wanted to try to get the Budgets with Citizens, something that ultimately did not happen.

And that is where the "plan b" would come in, which the socialists have prepared, but the United We Can sector rejects. A plan that has some numerical complications, as well as political ones: get the reform out with Cs (9), PDeCAT (4), Más País (2) and Compromís, Canarian Coalition, Nueva Canarias, Partido Regionalista de Cantabria (PRC) and Teruel Exists , with the abstention of UPN (2). A result for the minimum in which any failure could ruin the operation.

“What we are not going to do is lose the vote or accept that the bosses get out of the agreement.

Neither of those two scenarios is possible.

We will have to do what is necessary to avoid them, ”they point out in the socialist sector of the Executive, where they trust that if Díaz sees a real risk of losing the vote in a key reform that bears his seal, he will accept that it must be removed in any way, including with Cs .

In any case, for now the PSOE is allowing Díaz to continue trying to reach an agreement with the ERC and PNV.

In fact, the socialist sector of the Executive has still not called Ciudadanos, a clear gesture towards United We Can, which has demanded not explore that path while working on the other, plan A.

Things have not yet reached the dramatic point, and in fact in the Executive they still hope to reach an agreement with their partners and in ERC they admit that now there are serious negotiations.

The Socialists see the PNV very harshly, and that makes them think of that alternative plan with Cs.

The most complicated thing to resolve is precisely what, according to several of the sources consulted in the Government and in the unions, has a lesser practical effect: the primacy of regional agreements.

In practice, this is something that already occurs, especially in the Basque Country, where they are stronger.

In Catalonia there are hardly any, they are provincial.

Faced with a more favorable regional agreement for the worker than the state one, the judge applies it.

In addition, there is an agreement in the Basque Country, signed by employers and unions, to respect those agreements.

But as the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, explained in EL PAÍS, the PNV wants legal guarantees that this agreement will be fulfilled. And around this idea they are looking for formulas that the employers can accept, always without touching the agreed decree, which will go as it is to the vote on the 3rd and will remain so if it is approved.

But it is, insist several of those consulted, a more symbolic and political issue than one of real effects, so it should not be impossible to resolve it. The regulation on this point has not been touched on in the new decree of the labor reform. It is as it was. So you don't have to go back at all. In any case, this is the most sensitive issue because it was negotiated in the social dialogue between employers and unions, and it was decided to leave it as it was, with state primacy. The CEOE could use any agreement here to consider theirs broken, and Garamendi has pointed this out.

In addition to the delicate issue of the primacy of regional agreements, there are other issues for the future that are being debated to ensure that the investiture partners support the labor reform: among them, the abuse of part-time hiring for structural jobs — companies like supermarkets that hire almost all of their staff 30 hours a week to pay them below the SMI, but then do much more—which ERC claims.

It is an issue that has not been in the negotiations of the labor reform because the dialogue was limited to the issues committed to Europe - temporality, prevalence of sector agreements, hiring, flexibility through the ERTE so that there are no dismissals, subcontracting — but it is in the plans of the Ministry of Labor for the remainder of the legislature.

In addition, there is another issue that interests the ERC: a greater participation of the administration in the control and possible mediation in ERE processes of large companies, such as the recent one of Nissan in Barcelona.

There is also another central project, the so-called 21st Century Workers' Statute, a profound reform of this regulation to adapt it to a completely new labor market, and in this context positions can be negotiated with ERC, which insists that the labor reform seems limited.

In any case, apart from the discreet negotiation, both the PSOE and United We Can and the unions are multiplying the pressure on the PNV and ERC with the argument that they cannot overthrow a reform that is good for the workers, because it is going to reduce precariousness and temporary work very much —for example, it ends with a stroke of the pen with work contracts, of which there were eight million in 2019, and tries to push all temporary workers into the indefinite term— and because it will force many salaries to rise, especially the lowest.

If the sum of pressure and negotiation does not work, the PSOE will consider "plan b".

And there the internal tension with Podemos could become very strong.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-01-24

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