PEDRO Sanchez’s fragile minority government has been dealt yet another blow after plans to reduce the working week from 40 to 37.5 hours were rejected in a parliament vote.
The conservative Partido Popular (PP) and far-right Vox formed an unlikely alliance with Junts per Catalunya, the right-wing Catalan pro-independence party headed by fugitive from Spanish justice Carles Puigdemont, to vote down Wednesday’s bill in Congress.
Together, the three parties have 178 MPs, surpassing the 175 needed to command a majority in the 350-seat chamber.
The result is bad news for embattled prime minister Sanchez, with the proposed reduction in the working week forming a key part of his coalition deal with far-left Sumar – and may be a sign of things to come as his Socialist-led minority government attempt to pass a budget this autumn that is more than two years overdue.
The bill had been championed by Sumar’s leader, current deputy prime minister and labour minister Yolanda Diaz, alongside a host of trade unions.
Speaking in Congress, an angry Diaz accused the ‘three right-wing parties of voting to attack supermarket cashiers, store workers and those who work in the hospitality industry’.
“Mr Feijóo [PP leader], Mr Abascal [Vox leader] and Ms Nogueras [Junts MP] will have to face their voters when they are making a coffee, going on the metro, taking a taxi or plane,” she said.
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“What we are seeing today is a test of what a government led by Feijóo and Abascal could look like.”
Opponents of the bill argue a reduced working week would hit small businesses hard, leading to higher costs and job losses.
Miriam Noguera, spokesperson for Junts in Congress, said: “Defending small and medium-sized businesses, the self-employed and workers is good, but this law puts a lot of jobs at risk and we will not participate in that.”
Josep Lluis Sanchez Llibre, president of Foment, a Catalan employers’ association, warned that a vote to support the bill would represent ‘the most serious mistake that a Spanish government has made since the return to democracy’.
The labour ministry headed by Diaz, on the other hand, said the two-and-a-half hour weekly reduction would benefit 12.5 million full-time and part-time private sector workers, helping to improve productivity and reduce absenteeism.
The Sumar leader has already vowed to reintroduce the bill to Congress, slamming Junts’ veto as ‘incomprehensible’.
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