“The Government of Spain has fulfilled.” The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, launches this message a few days after the Law for the Reduction of Day finally face her first step in Congress. The message is addressed to the Popular Party and its 137 deputies but also to Junts, whose votes are indispensable for the norm to begin to be processed in the lower house from that next Wednesday. Although in the Ministry of Labor they maintain optimism on vote, the formation of Carles Puigdemont seems determined to knock down a reform that, at least in public, has rejected practically since it was announced. “This debate is going to chase them democratically,” the Minister warned the parliamentary groups on Wednesday.
Work and Junts have been negotiating the content of the law for months to reduce the day to 37.5 hours per week. The text came out at the beginning of the year of the Council of Ministers and has not yet been discussed in Congress. To do this, the initial procedure in which the amendments to the totality presented by the parliamentary groups are voted must be overcome. PP, Vox and also those of Carles Puigdemont have registered proposals to return the whole of the text to the government.
Díaz already postponed this first process before the summer break. The idea was that Congress voted the amendments to the whole in the last plenary of July, but work reached an agreement with Junts in which there were some more time for negotiation. In addition, they argued that the political conditions after the outbreak of the Santos Cerdán case did not cause a debate in conditions on a norm that in the coalition grant a very important political value. Cerdán was for a long time the interlocutor of the PSOE in the negotiations with Puidemont.
Now in September, PSOE and add they sought to delay the debate of totality for a week to continue giving the negotiations air and that is why on Tuesday the socialists proposed to change the agenda – in which by default the reduction of day was going – with the idea that the week of September 15 was voted. But this month the opposition has a majority at the Board of Spokespersons because the spokesperson of the Mixed Group is rotary and falls currently in union of the Navarrese people. And the right does not intend to delay a possible defeat of the government.
Next week it contains some factors that can harm the negotiations. The plenary will be condensed in two days full of content, with the Decree of Parental Permissions on Tuesday and the reduction of day the next day. And everything coinciding with a very important date for independence. September 11 is the Diada and nobody knows if Junts wants to reach that date after having given the government or a blow that, yes, would place it on the same sidewalk as PP and Vox.
The main flat of the formation of Carles Puigdemont met on Wednesday in Waterloo to analyze the political situation after the turbulent closure of course and hours after the meeting they held this week the leader of the party and the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa. The government, still without an official interlocutor with Junts after the departure of Santos Cerdán, tries to make gestures to bring an indispensable partner to bring Sánchez this week, its objective is still exhausting the legislature.
“The time has come to discuss and that citizens observe which formations are on the side of the right and who is not. Is the PP again hitting workers as it has done with the labor reform in our country? Are you going to put themselves on the side of labor denialism?” Diaz wondered, who prefers to load the responsibility of this rule in the PP and avoid public criticism to together in the middle of the negotiations.
“The Government of Spain has fulfilled, the letters, clear. We will take the debate of the reduction of the day and will chase in democratic terms to the whole world. All democopic institutes say that this is the measure that people, vote to whom they vote, is waiting as May water. And who fails is not the government but the opposition,” Diaz insisted in a statements this Wednesday in the Ministry of Labor.
Díaz “keep working” to get ahead
Although some sources from the parliamentary group of adding negotiations with Junts complicated, in work they do not give the vote for loss and maintain some optimism despite the signs that arrive from Catalonia. The vice president insists that “continues to work” with Junts and in her team they emphasize that the difficulties are not so much techniques regarding the legislation of the working day, in which they consider that there is margin according to the independence training, as policies of a more general magnitude.
If Junts decides not to block the parliamentary process of the standard, work has already indicated several negotiation paths. The main one, and more important for the Catalan business fabric, are the aid to SMEs to face the time cut, that the Diaz team already raised in its day in the social dialogue, but that withdrew before the 'no' to the agreement of the employers. In addition, Yolanda Díaz has even publicly opened to address a “reduction of absenteeism” in the Law of Reduction of the Day, a wink to already together, who continually place this issue among their priorities.
If the law is blocked next week in Congress, the second vice president has already warned that it will not give up to take the measure forward, although later time, something that has been supported by the government's socialist wing. The first vice president, María Jesús Montero, said this summer in the CCOO Congress that would approve the reduction of working hours, even if “to the second or the third.” “I even say the fourth,” said UGT leader, Pepe Álvarez, who has demanded that the Executive persist until the time cut is a reality for all workers.
In addition, Yolanda Díaz has already warned that, if the law is touched, it intends to approve by royal decree (which does not require parliamentary procedure) the reinforcement of the daily registry of the working day. An option that would eliminate the possibility of negotiating the measure, one of the most worried about many entrepreneurs within the norm.
The majority unions, CCOO and UGT, in Spain and in Catalonia, are preparing a joint response for Wednesday's vote. The organizations led by Unai Sordo and Pepe Álvarez have branded “kidnapping” and “democratic fraud” amendments to the entire right to knock down the reduction of the day agreed by the representatives of the workers with the government without even the possibility of debate their text.
