So were the 10 months and the last 24 hours in which the labor reform was agreed

Almost a year after the Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, appeared to declare the first state of alarm due to the emergence of the covid, the now second vice president, Yolanda Diaz, restarted the talks that would end up leading to the labor reform agreed today with employers and unions. 10 months of negotiations that have culminated in the last 24 hours of heart attack, with moments in which the agreement was about to blow up and that until noon this Thursday has not ended up being closed. This is a reconstruction of those months of negotiation and those last decisive hours.

Negotiators entered the fourth floor of the Ministry of Labor with one of the Gordian knots of the labor reform to be finalized: the Outsourcing. During the last 10 months this has been one of the headaches of social dialogue, both because of its size and because of its difficult solution. Finally, the last wording of this point is less guaranteeing than the unions would have liked and has been one of the reasons why the confederal committees of CCOO Y UGT, which have ended up blessing the agreement, have lasted until well into noon.

Although subcontracting has not been the only thorny point and it is that the employer’s threat to reopen the drawer of temporality flew over the oval room of number 63 of the Castellana all night. The agrarian employer (ASAJA), which has been the most contrary within the CEOE To support the labor reform, he demanded a looser temporary contract for the countryside. It was not worth them with the 90 days and they wanted 120, where neither the government nor the centrals have twisted their arms. And this at times strained a meeting that ended yesterday after three in the morning. “The Ministry of Labor does not comply with the time register,” jokes one of the negotiators.

Although the main visible face of this labor reform is that of the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, there are four actors who from the second row have sustained the day-to-day negotiations during these months. Joaquin Perez Rey, Secretary of State for Labor and Díaz’s ‘number 2’, has piloted the marathon meetings and Mari Cruz Vicente (CCOO), Mariano Hoya (UGT) y Rosa Santos (CEOE) have been its main interlocutors. Four faces that know each other well and that, except for Hoya from UGT who entered after the last union congress, carry seven agreements on ertes, a teleworking law, a rider law and a pension agreement. However, the contact between Díaz, the general secretaries of CCOO and UGT and the CEOE president “has been constant,” they say from Work; with cable included for Moncloa.

Reason for clash in the coalition

For 10 months they have been shaping the labor reform of the coalition. How was the meeting this week? “Great,” they say from Díaz’s team that the economic ‘brain’ of the Ministry, Miguel Lago, always responded; in order to bring a dose of optimism to the negotiations. Working alone began at the tables and ended up accompanied by representatives of the Economy and Social Security, after the shock caused in October by Nadia Calviño. The first vice president assumed the leadership of the reform as economic vice president and Díaz jumped by denouncing a “very serious breach” of the coalition agreement. The dialectical give and take of those days on whether “repeal yes” or “repeal no” covered a content that finally repeals only part of the heritage of the PP and focuses on providing new elements.

The leadership and political success of the reform have internally marked the coordination between the PSOE and United We Can, as well as the reluctance of the employers to enter into negotiations have marked the deliberations of the table. “It has cost them & rdquor ;, points out a union source. From the business bench they allude to the extensive counterproposal that they presented at the end of November and that in most of the points it amended the texts of the Government. From the business bench they have fought coma to coma and have finally managed to lower the ambition of the first drafts, eliminating issues such as the nullity of the temporary workers fired to avoid passing them to fixed.

Next station: Congress

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All the sources consulted agree that the entry into the agreement of the employer responds to a strategy of minimizing damage. Both at the social dialogue table, and later when the rule is sent to Congress and formations such as ERC or EH Bildu seek a more ambitious reform for workers.

And it is that yesterday is not the last chapter of the labor reform, after nine years of validity of the PP and more than three the PSOE promising, already from the Government (first alone, then with United We Can) that it would repeal it . The process of the Council of Ministers must be followed by approval in the Congress. There, the members of the Executive branch out weapons and have already protested on previous occasions that the dismissal has not been touched. Lower compensation and the loss of powers of the Administration to authorize collective dismissals are two elements inherited from Mariano Rajoy and that potential allies of Sánchez will want to touch. n