More pedagogy and fewer outbursts to save social dialogue for employment

The president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, seems to have put its finger on the wound with an idea – not a proposal – that, although it may be shocking, is not at all new. Even so, it has caused a visceral replica like few others by the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who accused the employer leader of being “reckless” for allowing himself to be “kidnapped by speeches more typical of Milei or Trump” and speaking only for “a privileged few”

The business leader suggested that workers receive their gross salary and be responsible for paying their Social Security contributions. “It is the way in which you would really see how much the real cost of salaries is in Spain,” said the employer leader who, deep down, intended reflect the boredom of many employers with the increase in labor costs that do not derive from salaries but from a growing burden of taxes and contributions.

It is not necessary to remember that this information It already appears on the payrolls of all employees, just like the ‘bite’ that taxes represent. But there is a difference between both cases: the employee is not obliged to settle annual accounts with Social Security as he does with the Treasury. through the Income Tax Declaration. For this reason, self-employed workers are much more aware of the cut in their payroll that taxes represent than what contributions subtract.

For the CEOE, this has allowed the Executive to ‘get out of its sleeve’ numerous additional contributions, not to mention those derived from a pension reform more designed to plug accounting holes than to guarantee the real sustainability of the system while criminalizing businessmen. accusing them of little less than poor salaries, when, as they defend, It is the Government itself that weighs down salaries the most in Spain.

Verbal escalation against the CEOE

Perhaps the literal nature of the formula chosen by the CEOE leader is not the best way to present this need for “transparency”, since in practice it means transferring the very high bureaucratic burden of some procedures, which the company now assumes to the employees. . If what is sought is for workers to be clear about how the cost of their social protection is distributed, There are ways to do it without causing an earthquake in labor relations.

But the controversy and confusion that Garamendi’s words have generated show that, if issues like these raise so many blisters, it is because we are faced with a fractured social dialogue that needs more pedagogy and less outbursts. Or at least, listen without caricaturing those who defend other points of view.

Ultimately, just as unions represent workers, employers defend those they hire. Dialogue between the two is an unavoidable imperative, and beyond the disagreements and rhetoric, Garamendi’s will to close pacts with CCOO and UGT cannot be denied, as was made clear with such recent milestones. such as the renewal of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Therefore it turns out Díaz’s response is especially worrying. The number three of the Government has been corresponding to the responsibility of the employers’ associations for more than two years when it comes to agreeing on a labor reform or the aforementioned AENC, disregarding their proposals on issues as relevant as the SMI and even questioning their representativeness in the negotiation, while He launches into a rhetorical escalation that has reached its maximum with this matter.

One day before breaking into a labor dispute, meeting with the strike committee of a company (and not as leader of Sumar, but as Minister of Labor, that is, representing the Government), the vice president accused the president of the CEOE of leaving “kidnapped by speeches more typical of Milei or Trump” and “speaking only to a privileged few.”

Of course, it was not done face to face, sitting at a social dialogue table, but on a social network. A missed opportunity to listen and dialogue with the representatives of those who create the vast majority of employment in Spain, and they also do so by scrupulously complying with obligations that, as in the case of labor reform, they do not apply the same when the employer is a public administration.

This Thursday, now in a television interview, Díaz ‘softened’ his tone with Garamendi and asked him to “return to common sense” to deal with “issues that are very serious.” If these words respond to a real desire to sit down and talk, they are welcome.

But in the few months that we have been in the Legislature, the negotiating spirit that Díaz showed in the previous one is increasingly blurring. Her triple role as minister, vice president and leader of Sumar has resulted in increasingly intense disagreements with the PSOE and its former partners. The palpable proof was the failure of the subsidy reform, that came to Congress without an agreement with unions or employers.

Now tripartite social dialogue is once again entrusted to carry out this and other no less relevant measures such as the reduction of working hours or the planned reform of layoffs. If the objective is to obtain electoral revenue, Sumar’s results do not support the effectiveness of a strategy of this type.

If it is about wearing down the CEOE by disqualifying its president, she would not be the first head of Labor to try it and, apart from generating noise, it is always the Government of the day that ends up ‘returning to the common sense’ of social dialogue. Wouldn’t it be better to save time and noise with a pragmatic and constructive attitude?