[Politics] Pedro Sánchez: “We will fulfill the commitment to the labor reform. It is necessary. We will do it with consensus "

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Pedro Sánchez considers the crisis of the last week of the coalition settled, the hardest since Yolanda Díaz succeeded Pablo Iglesias as vice president and at the head of United We Can. The president and La Moncloa, through the distributed images of Díaz and Nadia Calviño walking together through Trujillo during the Spanish-Portuguese summit in the Extremaduran city, want to leave behind the tension of recent days. La Moncloa has absolutely controlled those images of the two vice presidents because the press could not access the greetings or the walks, contrary to what is usual. Even so, the swords remain high and now the most difficult thing comes: agreeing on the content of the labor reform in this final stretch of the negotiation. Sánchez has absolutely minimized the problems in the joint press conference with Antonio Costa, the Portuguese president - who has refused to talk about his own internal crisis, which is about to end in elections - but has wanted to make it clear that the labor reform is he will do yes or yes, because it is a government commitment and also because it is necessary, in his opinion, to reverse many of the problems caused by the 2012 PP reform, which was carried out without an agreement with the unions.

"This is a government that fulfills its commitments," Sánchez started. “We said we were going to raise the SMI [minimum interprofessional wage], and we did it. We also promised the euthanasia law, the educational law, or to carry out mechanisms such as ERTE, and we did. We are a government that complies. [With the labor reform] I assumed a commitment in the investiture, another in the coalition agreement, and another with the European Commission ”, he declared. Afterwards, he also explained that he understands that it is not only a matter of commitments, but that he considers it a necessity: “It is also that [the labor reform] is necessary in two areas. It is very important that we recover the consensus that was broken in 2012 with the counter-reform of the PP. We are called to rebuild that consensus. I would like to recall that the Government has reached 12 agreements in the midst of a pandemic [with employers and unions]. Therefore, the will of the Government to agree is unequivocal. The government will honor its commitments. We have to modernize labor standards ”, insisted the president.

This mention of the consensus is important, because at this moment the employers are saying that as the draft is, they are very far from entering into that agreement because they believe that the Labor proposal is too close to the positions of the unions. From United We Can they want to try to convince the employers, but for them it would not be so serious to approve a reform without the employers in the same way that the PP approved it without the unions. However, the PSOE does seem willing to give more to incorporate the employers, and around this idea of a deeper or softer reform will move the discussion between Labor and Economy or what is the same, between Díaz and Calviño and his teams, now that they will both be in the negotiation.

Sánchez has not wanted to make clear what he intends to do on key issues such as collective bargaining, with the prevalence of company agreements over sectorial ones, which is one of the most sensitive issues, or ultra-activity, that is, the validity of the agreements when its sti[CENSORED]ted duration is over. “These issues are part of the roadmap and will be put in place when they have to be addressed. We will do everything with coordination, the maximum dialogue and the maximum consensus for the modernization of the labor market ”, Sánchez has limited himself to pointing out.

LINK: https://elpais.com/espana/2021-10-28/sanchez-cumpliremos-el-compromiso-con-la-reforma-laboral-es-necesaria-la-haremos-con-consenso.html