Sumar opens the debate on the working day in Congress to reduce it to 37.5 hours

Once the unemployment benefit reform is closed, the Minister of Labor and leader of Sumar is ready to address the next challenge in labor matters: that of the working day. The parliamentary group headed by Sumar has presented this Thursday a non-law proposal in the Congress of Deputies to reduce the maximum working day to 37.5 hours per week without producing a cut in salary in 2024. This text does not represent a legislative initiative , but rather it is a mechanism by which the chamber is urged to rule on an issue, to ask the Government to legislate on the matter.

This measure was included in the Government agreement sealed between Sumar and PSOE, although the objective for 2024 was to reach 38.5 hours per week, while the next step was delayed until 2025. Therefore, the minority partner seeks to accelerate the deadlines through this route, while suggesting that a debate be initiated with social agents to continue reducing it to 32 hours. This is precisely the goal that the unions had set in their proposals for the current legislature, given that this would mean materializing the so-called four-day work day.

The representative for Pontevedra de Sumar, Verónica Martínez Barbero, explained in the presentation of the initiative that this reduction will translate into a better reconciliation of work and family life, an improvement in terms of health, less exposure to risks and a more equal distribution of care tasks. Likewise, in the text, the political party located to the left of the PSOE highlights its positive effects on mental health and the consequent reduction in the hours in which workers are exposed to the psychosocial risks of their employment.

He has also referred to the impact that this reduction would have on productivity, on which he has admitted that they do not have definitive data, since they are carrying out an analysis. The initiative indicates that while apparent labor productivity increased by 15.3% in real terms between 1995 and 2022, real compensation per employee grew by around 1.2%. This has meant that remuneration has lost 4.2 percentage points in the distribution of productivity and, therefore, there is a “considerable” margin to reduce the working day without cutting salaries.

In the first point of the proposal, the plurinational group requests that the Workers’ Statute be modified, as well as all relevant provisions, for the establishment, during 2024, of an ordinary day of effective work with a maximum duration of 37 hours and weekly average, without this entailing in its application any reduction in the salary of workers. To then simultaneously open a process of social dialogue, with the aim of reducing it to reach the average 32 hours per week.