The Ministry of Labor and the PSOE clash again. On this occasion, they disagree on how to protect part-time workers so that the company, unilaterally, cannot reduce their hours and, with it, their salaries. Tomorrow the Council of Ministers was scheduled to approve the transposition of the European directive on transparent and reliable working conditions, a transposition that has already been delayed for a year and a half, but now a question has been raised when these discrepancies come to light publicly.
The Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Pérez Rey, has made this explicit by stating that “it is essential that within the framework of the transposition of this directive a rule is incorporated that, just as it is prevented from unilaterally transforming a full-time contract by the company part-time or vice versa, prevents reducing the working day or extending it with a proportional reduction in salary." He also added that this measure could only be carried out through an agreement between companies and workers, and not by a unilateral imposition by the company.
He also added that this position has been defended from the beginning of the processing of this transposition and that it has to be incorporated into the final text, and highlighting that in a directive that guarantees knowing when, how and under what conditions work is going to be done, the part-time employees “cannot be subjected to something as violent from the point of view of human resources management as unilaterally reducing their working hours with a proportional reduction in salary.” A measure that would especially affect women, who are the majority of part-time workers,
In this line of confrontation with the PSOE, the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, already said this weekend in Galicia that “within the Government I also have problems.” In this case, she was referring to the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours in 2025, for which she asked the unions and workers for help at an electoral event in Ferrol.
The reduction of working hours is a negotiation that has just begun, but the transposition of the directive is already long overdue. It is about establishing the information rights of workers and the advance notice with which they must know the working days, the working day, the additional hours, etc.
Pérez Rey's statements occurred at the end of the first roundtable of dialogue with social agents on the unemployment benefit reform that was overturned by Parliament last month by the decisive vote of Podemos deputies, who considered that it incorporated cuts in the situation of workers over 52 years of age. In this way, the norm has to be raised again. On this occasion it will be done through social dialogue, and it began with a meeting this morning, in which the unions and employers have presented their claims.
Labor will analyze the proposals of the social agents to try to reach an agreement that this time they will transfer to parliament in the form of a bill, and therefore with the option for parliamentary groups to introduce amendments. This is part of the shift that the Ministry of Labor will take from now on, working more with bills, and leaving behind the decree laws, which are faster, but also more subject to all or nothing validation. A key point will be the contribution of workers over 52 years of age, which was the element that Podemos argued to vote against.
