With the labor reform in force for five months, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, has launched a new legislative offensive. She has three new laws in preparation to regulate the participation of unions and companies in public administrations, to incorporate workers in the boards of directors and management bodies of companies, and to elaborate what she calls the Labor Statute of the century XXI.
The first step starts today with the opening of the public consultation to draw up the institutional participation law, which will be open until June 11, with the aim of regulating the institutional participation of trade union and business organizations in the collegiate bodies with functions of decision or control that act integrated in the general administration of the State, and in the socioeconomic consultation tables. These are forums such as the Economic and Social Council, Fundae, SIMA, the Superior Council of Statistics or the Tripartite Consultative Commission of the Labor Inspection.
What is intended is to establish a framework of rights and obligations to a participation that now works informally. Rights that include a remuneration to the participants as compensation for the expenses they have to incur for their participation.
In this way, Yolanda Díaz begins with the measure where, in principle, there are fewer difficulties. More problematic is her initiative to regulate the participation of workers' representatives in company boards of directors and decision-making bodies. She argues that it is the development of article 129 of the Constitution. If the first point establishes participation in the public administration, which is to be channeled through the institutional participation law, the second point proposes promoting participation in the company. “The public powers will effectively promote the various forms of participation in the company…. They will also establish the means that facilitate the access of workers to the ownership of the means of production, ”says that article, which the vice president interprets as a presence of the workers in the boards of directors through their legal representation.
The third legislative element that Yolanda Díaz wants to promote is a reform of the Workers' Statute. She wants to change the name, leave it in the Labor Statute, and especially modify the content. Adapt it to the new times. On May Day he already announced the creation of a commission of experts to implement this reform, arguing in these words: “The old trade unionists said that the old statute of the 20th century had authoritarian overtones. They said that democracy had been left at the gates of labor law in the 20th century. Well, now it's time to open the doors of labor law to the 21st century, change reality from top to bottom”. A project in which the experts must pave the way.
