Labor reform: Government, employers and unions approach positions in “discount time”

“We are in the discount time “The Second Vice President and Minister of Labor acknowledged, Yolanda Diaz , at noon this Wednesday; a few hours before the government negotiators returned to sit at the negotiating table of the labor reform with employers and unions. “The table almost lives here”, Diaz has ironized, after a week of marathon daily meetings. This Wednesday the parties hope to close what is called to be the final text of one of the structural reforms that will mark the legislature. And the bosses and the unions have cleared agendas for Thursday morning, in which they plan to convene their governing bodies to discuss and vote on whether or not the coalition’s labor reform will also carry their signature.

The sense of the vote of each of the social agents is still not clear and it cannot be ruled out that even after the deliberations of the leaders of the CEOE , CCOO Y UGT no new changes occur. “This is not like the extensions of the ertes, where a short text was voted and it was easier to intuit what each organization would vote for. Now we have to decide on a very complex document & rdquor ;, explains a source present in the social dialogue. Several consulted actors from the different benches fall more for the band of the tripartite agreement than for the disagreement, but all of them express it with a small mouth and very cautious tread.

“It is not looking back, it is towards the future”, defined this Wednesday the second vice president, aware that several of the inheritances of the PP will stand, like the compensation for dismissal or processing salaries . At the same time that the coalition will legislate on intact matters from the 1984 , such as the simplification of contracts to curb the temporalityhighest in all of Europe. The Government has sought a “balanced” reform, in the sense of granting assignments to an employer’s association that has negotiated hard during the last nine months and that at times seemed clearly out of the agreement. While it has respected the red lines that the unions have clearly marked and on which it was conditioned by the explicitness of the coalition agreement.

White smoke on Thursday morning

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The plants will regain power in the Collective negotiation, with the return of the prevalence of the sectoral agreement over that of the company and the return of the ultraactive indefinite. Entrepreneurs, for their part, have conserved large levels of flexibility in contracting, especially with contracts for foreseeable peaks of activity (90 days and with the expansion of the staff that they require) and for unforeseeable peaks (between six months and one year, concatenable up to 18 months in a 24-month period). They also add the figure of new ertes, which will consolidate part of the pandemic experience and will allow employers to save part of the social exemptions and not have to resort to dismissal (and pay severance payments).

The plausible and probable calendar that the Government manages is to have the text closed (or practically) this Wednesday, even if it is late at night. On Thursday the social agents will pronounce on it and if the tripartite front is preserved, the technicians of the different ministries will turn over in the coming days to finish outlining the final draft. With the idea of ​​being able to bring the labor reform to the Minister council next Tuesday, the 28th. Although it cannot be ruled out that, given the legal complexity of the matter, the Executive may have to convene a new extraordinary conclave one or two days later to finish driving all the nails.