Although it will not be until next Tuesday, at the last Council of Ministers in March, when the Government’s aid package is approved to deal with the high prices that the pandemic started and has fueled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. , some of the outlines of that plan are already taking shape. At least, with regard to the interventions in which United We Can is working, according to the statements that Vice President Yolanda Díaz has made this Thursday. The also Minister of Labor has dropped that the prohibition of carrying out dismissals for objective reasons could be recovered, as already happened during the pandemic, to try to prevent companies from reducing their workforces in response to inflation.
“This is not the time to fire, and it is not the time to lower salaries,” Díaz has indicated in Congress. Labor sources confirm that along with this measure, the possibility of restricting with a little more intensity the tools by which companies can lower the wages of their workers in this circumstance is also considered. “We are looking at possibilities so that a devaluation does not take place”, recognize these same sources, at the same time that they qualify that nothing is closed, since the negotiation is still underway.
During the pandemic, the Government took a series of measures aimed at avoiding a bloodletting of layoffs as a result of the drastic reduction in economic activity. Among them was the prohibition of carrying out any objective dismissal that was directly justified by the influence of covid. This measure was not the only one aimed at protecting employment. One of the requirements for companies to benefit from a Temporary Employment Regulation File (ERTE) due to covid was that they could not fire any worker they later reactivated for a period of six months.
“Nobody would understand that, in a crisis situation, with those benefits they would lower wages. The effort must be collective”, added the vice president, referring to the benefits of 64,000 million euros that the Ibex-35 companies presented in 2021. To finish bordering the dismissal in response to the increase in the cost of energy and hydrocarbons, which is severely punishing different vectors of activity, Díaz recalled that the new ERTE contemplated in the labor reform (among which the RED Protection Mechanism stands out) “are already available”, for any sector that is in a difficult situation. “They have already given results in the previous crisis,” she added.
rent control
As confirmed by social dialogue sources, this great pact in response to the economic effects caused by the war started by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will extend to different fields of action, such as the limitation that the rental price continue to grow in line with inflation, something that current legislation provides for. However, the central core of this containment program will be made up of the provisions that the countries of the European Union adopt during the European Council, which is holding its first meeting this Thursday. Based on what is agreed there, the Government will have a common roadmap on which other decisions will depend. This is the case of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (AENC), which unions and employers negotiate in parallel.
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This Wednesday the majority unions, UGT and CC OO, together with self-employed organizations such as Uatae and UPTA, consumers (Facua) and neighborhood associations (CEAV) demonstrated in 58 Spanish cities demanding urgent measures with the increase in the cost of living . The final height of the shock plan that will be approved next Tuesday depends on whether the Twenty-seven agree on a series of measures to reduce the cost of energy – the matrix of the price explosion – that allows the funnel in which they are trapped to be widened workers, entrepreneurs and families.
