It follows the offensive of the second vice-president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, to denounce the high salaries of senior executives if they are examined in comparison with the remuneration of the workers they lead. If on Wednesday, at the signing of the agreement for the increase of the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI), he already claimed to open this debate, on Friday he pointed to one of the possible formulas to achieve it. It could be done through a greater tax burden.
"There are possibilities, also fiscal" to address this issue, said Díaz. He began by pointing out that there are different modulations to deal with it and that one could reach an agreement, but that another would be to act through taxes on the salaries of managers, although without giving more details.
To justify the debate, the vice president exhibited two comparisons. On the one hand, that "the executive presidents of the Ibex 35 in our country have approximate remunerations that are 174 times more" than those of their workers; and on the other, that the executive directors of these companies, not the presidents, receive a remuneration that multiplies by 54 the average salary of their companies.
The vice-president's thesis is that, after so much debate about the increase in the SMI, it is also necessary to talk about maximum salaries and highlight the difference between the remuneration of senior managers and workers. "The focus should not be on minimum wages, but on these maximum wages, which are abusive", he declared before his participation in a conference of the UGT on employment.
On Thursday, the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, stated that Díaz's suggestion to intervene in business remuneration is typical of a "banana republic". One more episode of the confrontation between Díaz and Garamendi, who already experienced another act with the employers' union, dissociating themselves from the 5% increase in the SMI and which now continues with the controversy over managers' salaries.
On the other hand, Díaz made an announcement yesterday about another radically different issue. It will immediately modify the assumptions of the legislation that currently allow immediate dismissal of a worker with a permanent disability.
It refers to article 49 of the Workers' Statute, which provides that severe invalidity, total permanent incapacity or absolute permanent incapacity imply the expiry of the employment contract. The law presupposes that the worker can no longer adequately carry out his duties, which leads to the termination of the employment relationship.
Precisely, on Thursday the Court of Justice of the EU stretched Spain's ears on this issue, in a judgment that considers the regulations that allow the dismissal of an employee with a permanent disability to be contrary to the European directive.
However, yesterday Díaz did not make any reference to this sentence, but related the initiative to the demands of the Spanish Committee of Representatives of Persons with Disabilities (Cermi), and related it to the elimination of the term "diminuíts" of the Constitution, just approved.
