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The Catalan employers press to increase their weight in collective bargaining or the prevalence of the regional agreement over the state
The labour reform enters its decisive phase in the Congress without the Government having yet managed to secure the necessary support to ensure a majority. In this negotiating back and forth, the bosses Pimec redouble contacts with the parties with representation in the chamber so that they make their amendments their own and thus “adapt” the new norm to small and medium-sized companies. The Catalan business organization chaired by Antoni Canete advocates increasing its weight in collective bargaining or returning to the legislation prior to Zapatero’s labor reform and that the State assume part of the compensation in the dismissal of an SME, among others.
Antoni Cañete came to the presidency of Pimec last year with the slogan of “putting SMEs in the command post” and with the labor reform he hopes to put the saying into practice. The document of amendments that the business organization has already shared with ERC, Together, PDECat Y PSOE it focuses on modifying the norm in terms of business size, with more plausible claims –as regards the possible support it can obtain among the formations- than others. In the coming days, they hope to continue contacts with forces such as C’s, which in recent days has gained relevance due to the lack of agreement with the forces of peripheral nationalism.
The most direct for the coffers of SMEs is to recover a concept repealed in the labor reform of 2010, that of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Before it, the Salary Guarantee Fund (FOGASA) assumed 40% of the indemnities of those companies with fewer than 25 workers on the workforce. Which reduced the cost for the same and pushed up the amounts for the workers, at the cost of a greater effort of the public coffers.
Negotiating ambition
But the great claim of Pimec to finish rubbing shoulders as equals with the centenary employers Work Promotion is to be a key actor in the negotiation of agreements. For this, it demands a relevant change of nuance. Currently, in order to negotiate an agreement, the relevant business association must certify that it represents the 10% of companies of a sector and that in turn employ 10% of the workers in that sector. Pimec asks that representing 10% of the companies in that sector be enough to prove the representativeness, which would open the door wide to many agreements.
The second part of that claim, much more ambitious and which would mean an open confrontation with the big CEOE employers, is to enable a mechanism to calculate the institutional representation of businessmen. That is, ask the parties to vote in favor of creating a regulation so that, in case of conflict, the State can count how many companies one employer represents and how many another represents. With the intention that Conpymes, the state company of Pimec, be recognized as a valid interlocutor and that the next labor reform can be negotiated at the same table as CEOE, CCOO and UGT.
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Shared claims
Not all of its claims are in the ‘SME’ key and some are shared by its regional/national axis with some of the potential partners of the Executive. This is the case of the prevalence of regional agreements over state agreements, where Pimec coincides with ERC and PNV in wanting to reinforce the tools so that a substantial part of labor relations does not have to depend on Madrid. One of the vault keys of the conversations that the Government has open to get more ‘yeses’ than ‘noes’ for one of its star policies of the legislature.
