Vice President Yolanda Díaz visits Lula to promote labor reform and raise her international profile

Former Brazilian President Lula and Vice President Díaz, this Wednesday at the hotel in Rio de Janeiro where they met. Antonio Lacerda (EFE)

The first appointment of the second vice president of Spain, Yolanda Díaz, on her trip to Brazil has been with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who aspires to return to power in a few months at the head of a broad movement to defeat the current president at the polls , the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.

The meeting that Díaz and Lula held this Wednesday in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro lasted almost an hour and was mainly dedicated to the Spanish labor reform, endorsed on February 3.

The former Brazilian president (2003-2011) considers her a role model to combat job insecurity if she wins a third term.

The also Minister of Labor and leader of Podemos plans to meet with leaders of the Latin American left, local trade unionists and Brazilian businessmen in this three-day visit that will serve to raise her international and national profile hand in hand with her main project.

She will also visit São Paulo.

It is the second time that Díaz travels to Latin America this month because on the 11th he attended the inauguration of the new president, Gabriel Boric, in Santiago de Chile, whose victory is the greatest joy that the left has taken in this part of the world in recent times.

During the last few months, Lula has turned the Spanish reform into one of the pre-campaign issues in which Brazil is embarking, which is holding elections in October.

"In the world, labor reforms tend to cut rights, but this has served to recover rights," a spokesman for Lula stressed after the meeting to explain that interest.

After the vicissitudes of the approval of the project last February – it went ahead thanks to two betrayals and a vote by mistake – it is in force.

The minister highlighted the strong increase in permanent contracts: 139% in February compared to February 2021, as she stated in an interview with

, one of the main Brazilian newspapers, which presents her as "the most popular politician in Spain according to a survey this month by the CIS.”

As Díaz explained after the meeting, "Lula wants to do something similar" to the Spanish reform.

The vice president has also highlighted the Brazilian's interest in the delivery law and his willingness to "actively collaborate" with him.

Delivery men are a sector of great interest to Lula's Workers' Party (PT) because it is especially large and very vulnerable.

For Lula it is important that the Spanish text was the result of consensus, of months of negotiations between the government, the unions and the business community.

Lula's team highlighted in a note that, according to the minister, "businessmen needed to understand that a more stable, motivated and qualified workforce would lead to more prosperous businesses."

From her perspective, the reform also serves to increase productivity and boost the internal market.

The leader of Brazil's left has long been the favorite in the polls, but in recent weeks the president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, has begun to trim his lead.

And, although neither of them has made his candidacy official yet, it is certain that they will attend and that they are the most likely duo in the second round.

The founder of the PT, who presided over Brazil between 2003 and 2009, has highlighted that this is the third meeting he has held with interlocutors from the Spanish government to discuss the issue.

He was with Díaz in Madrid on a tour he made through various European capitals at the end of last year and later held a virtual meeting with Minister José Luis Escrivá, head of the Social Security portfolio.

Spain also inspired Brazil for the latest labor reform.

That was approved shortly after Lula's PT was stripped of power in an

(removal process).

Promoted by the right-wing Michel Temer in 2017, it was modeled on the changes promoted in labor legislation by Mariano Rajoy.

In any case, the Brazilian has not specified for the moment if he intends to revoke Temer's reform, modify it or simply tweak it.

Those details, if they come, will come later.

For now he is embarking on remembering the prosperity that marked the PT mandates, when millions of Brazilians came out of poverty.

The international situation was different and the boom in raw materials gave it a margin of maneuver that it will by no means enjoy now.

Lula is aware that, if he is elected president, one of the great challenges he will face is to reactivate the economy and domestic consumption.

Hunger has returned, inflation is above 10%, unemployment is around 11% (that is, 12 million unemployed) and there have been several years with minimal GDP growth.

Vice President Díaz's visit coincides with a meeting of the Puebla Group, a forum of progressive Latin American leaders to which former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero belongs.

In this framework, she will meet with former Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo.

She also has an appointment with former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff.

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