The CEOE’s “no” this Monday to the pact for the sustainability of pensions with the Government and unions may be the last refusal allowed by the employer in the remainder of the year in terms of social dialogue. According to sources from the management of the business organization tell EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA, the pressures for Antonio Garamendi to end up signing the pact of the other major reform pending in 2021, the labor reform, are constant for weeks; In addition, they come from what is supposedly the great ally of employers in terms of the labor market: Brussels.
These sources say that both the European Commission and the continent’s large employers’ association, Business Europe, insist on the advisability of CEOE participating in the labor pact with unions and the Government “because they want to do something to that the temporality decreases yes or yes, and they want it with agreement also yes or yes “, they explain. The idea would have been transferred, gently in the forms but firmly in the background, the person in charge of the European recovery and resilience mechanism, Céline Gauer, in her recent visit to Madrid, during which he met -among others- with the employers. The heads of Business Europe, in which the Spanish employers are integrated, are in charge of recalling this assignment: “The CEOE is monitored by these two European bodies”, they assure .
So Brussels, far from serving as a parapet for CEOE to avoid a labor reform contrary to its interests – as unions have often denounced – is an incentive for the agreement, and that pressure in favor of the pact has also increased since the crisis in the Government for the control of the labor reform has introduced ministries such as Economy and Social Security in the negotiations that until now had only been piloted by Labor: “If the proposal came only from the ‘communist’ ministry”, they say sarcastically from these business sources, “it would be easier to justify a refusal, but now it is a proposal in which everything is compromised. government”.
Internal balances
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For the pressure in favor of the agreement on the labor market to be successful, yes, the agreed text must be acceptable to most of the sectors that make up the employer’s association. And, these sources from the CEOE management warn, there are many organizations dissatisfied with the large number of agreements that Garamendi has signed with the Government and unions in recent months – a dozen, between the minimum wage in 2020, ‘riders’, teleworking and the erte and its extensions – while the Executive has taken measures that harm its interests. The meeting this Monday of the Executive Committee of CEOE that decided “no” to the pension pact has shown which are those most belligerent organizations: those of the food industry (which is considered especially aggrieved by the recent increase in the Minimum Wage), the self-employed (who reproach the Government for a lack of diligence to prevent increases in electricity and fuel) and insurance (who complain about the limitation of the deductions in personal income tax for contributing to pension plans).
In the month that remains of negotiation, CEOE’s final position on labor reform will therefore depend on three factors: pressures from Brussels in favor of understanding, the weight of business sectors that do not want a pact, and the consequences of being left out of an agreement, which favor union positions. Yesterday’s “no” in pensions, these sources observe, may pave the way to a future “yes” in the labor market.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com