Antonio Garamendi, president of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), has claimed the independence and role of businessmen and has criticized the “unfair” treatment they are receiving after distancing themselves from the increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI), Approved this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers.
Regarding this, he has insisted that the businessmen have not gotten up from the table and has complained that “when you reach agreements because you think it is good, they call you a hero and when you consider, with institutional loyalty, that another agreement is not good , they immediately call you a villain”. In this way, he spoke this Tuesday during his participation in the meeting organized by the Joly Group in Malaga, the city in which last Sunday the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, addressed the employers to ask for “coherence” and ” answer”.
Garamendi has defended his vision of the State and the institutional loyalty that the CEOE is carrying out and that is “the basis of democracy”, “even if the contrary is said”. “Businessmen are the architects of making the Welfare State work”, he said, emphasizing that the business community works “always positively” and is what generates wealth and employment in a country; “and we are never going to renounce it even if it is said that we are against it”.
The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the rise of the SMI by 8% to place it at 1,080 euros, an increase that the Government has achieved with the unions but without the CEOE, which opted for a 4% rise. In this regard, he has indicated that this pact “is not social dialogue, it is a responsibility of the Government, after consulting with the social agents”, and here, he has had an impact, “businessmen have never gotten up from the table”.
“What has happened -he added- is that the Government has skipped agreements that we signed and that have later changed, so it’s like ‘I feel but I do what I want'”, lamented Garamendi, who criticized that, among other things, the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, “has skipped article 51 that we signed in the labor reform”; which has caused a loss of confidence, she has said herself.
With this statement, the president of the employer was referring to the transactional amendment presented to the Employment Law, which allows the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate to rule on the concurrence of the causes specified by the company in the event of collective dismissal in the initial communication of the Employment Regulation File (ERE). The amendment supposes a modification of the article 51.2 of the Statute of the Workers relative to the collective dismissal.
This change caused the employers to break the dialogue with the Ministry of Labor, which was “invalidated as a reliable interlocutor” for the CEOE. Garamendi has also indicated that the day before the SMI meeting, at ten o’clock at night, they did not know the proposal that the Government was going to put on the table.
The president of the businessmen explained that the CEOE sent the Government a proposal to raise the minimum wage by 4% in which it also raised two key issues: the situation of the rural sector, with skyrocketing expenses, and with the public contracts, since the SMI has risen 45% in three years while these have remained paralyzed.
And it is that, in his opinion, the income agreement cannot be something to talk about between now and December, “it is not an agreement for six months” -when the general elections are held-, “it is a subject of much more travel where the logical thing is that the parties called to govern this country are sitting at the table”, approving the presence of the PP “and more parties that give stability to the country”.
During his speech at the forum, the president of the CEOE has defended the work of the employers during the 2008 crisis and the pandemic, and has marked digitization, the circular economy and investment in innovation as challenges for Spain, with the focus on on the importance of Dual Training.
Likewise, he has recognized that what currently worries him the most is “political and social stability.” In this sense, he has said that “all policies that go in the direction of radicalizing society are not good.” “We defend the Constitution of 78 and we are going to continue working in that line, and for that we want dialogue, legal certainty, stability and quality in the norm”, he pointed out, adding that he does not believe “that the best way is as it is being done now “.
