Yolanda Díaz has celebrated the agreement to reduce working hours without reducing salary. I find it fascinating that the Government and unions, those who get paid, reach an agreement without those who pay, the job creators. And they call it social. Let us not forget that the former leadership of UGT Andalucía was recently condemned for keeping part of the money from the Board’s subsidies for the union. The reduction of working hours is a cosmetic, propaganda and counterproductive measure.
Cosmetics and propaganda because Díaz has already achieved a reduction in working hours by triggering multiple employment and disguising unemployment removing the inactive discontinuous fixed ones. Indeed, according to the INE, the effective hours per employee were 35.40 hours per week in the second quarter of 2018. In the fourth quarter of 2023 they fell to 31.7 hours. Díaz has achieved his goal of reducing the working day to less than 37.5 hours per week, disguising precariousness and temporality.
It is a counterproductive measure because especially harms small businesses and microenterpriseswhich are the vast majority of Spanish companies (2,941,440 of the 2,947,353 in Spain, according to official data). What’s more, microbusinesses, a small business, company or store that have between one and nine employees at most, and there are 1,136,705 of them, will see their costs increase. According to Cepyme, the direct annual cost for companies will be 11,800 million euros, due to the increase in salary per hour worked, and an indirect cost that could exceed 42,000 million per year if what will no longer be produced is taken into account.
The entire cost falls on small and micro businesses. Large companies not only can afford the increase in expenses, but in many cases they will take the opportunity to adjust their workforce since many of them have excess employees. That is to say, this measure represents an increase in costs for small companies and for large companies an opportunity to get rid of redundant jobs.
Of course, neither Yolanda Díaz nor the unions have thought of reducing labor costs or taxes to facilitate this reduction. Therefore, all the cost increase is passed on to the companies who want to maintain or increase employment. No problem. Then, in a country where there are 3.8 million unemployed people signed up for SEPE according to the USO studies office, they will tell you that there is a record of employment, triggering public employment with debt and multiple employment.
It is a shame to talk about an employment record in a country where the employment rate is 52% – it has barely risen 2 points since 2018 – and the activity rate is stagnant at 59%, just a few tenths above the level of 3Q2019 (58.7%). In a country in which the population aged 16 or over has increased, due to immigration, by more than 2.5 million since the third quarter of 2018, it is a joke to talk about an employment record giving the total number of affiliations, especially when This figure includes 600,000 multiple jobs.
It harms weaker companies and workers
As always, this interventionist measure harms the weakest workers and companies and is done without any compensation in the tax burden on companies and, as demonstrated by the figure of effective hours mentioned above, it will generate even more effective precariousness, as Fedea explains, and greater statistical make-up of unemployment in this false rocket that they sell us.
The evidence of the antisocial policy of Sánchez and Díaz has been reflected by Eurostat. Spain becomes the fourth country where severe material deficiency has increased the most between 2022 and 2023. Poverty increases and they tell you that they are very “social.”
In 2019, the percentage of people at risk of poverty in Spain was 25.3%; Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Italy, Latvia and Lithuania surpassed us. Well, in 2023, Spain’s risk of poverty rate stands at 27%; Only Romania and Bulgaria surpass us. Take social government. This after increasing the debt by almost 400,000 million, making everyone pay taxes and triggering inflation, which in November was once again above the eurozone average, according to the INE and Eurostat, and accumulated 20.4% of increase in the CPI since 2019.
Sánchez and Díaz always harm those they pretend to protect. Social communism does not do so out of incompetence, but by design: to have a dependent and submissive population. The only ones who live much better under socialism are the truly rich, because socialism eliminates their possible competition.
Socialism is always misery. Ruin the country and impoverish it to create hostage dependent clients.