The Ministry of Labor and the CC OO and UGT unions agreed on December 15 to extend the death permit to ten days, well above the two days extendable to four currently in force. CEOE and Cepyme did not participate in the meeting in which the agreement was sealed, with which the ministry itself concluded the negotiation a week before due to the distance between the positions of each. It is precisely this rejection by employers’ associations of the pact between the ministry and workers’ representatives which joins another refusal, that of the PP. Sources in the main Congress party indicate that they will not support this initiative, given that it does not have the support of the entire social dialogue. Labor is considering the idea of presenting the project in the form of a decree-law, so that it comes into force as soon as it is approved by the Council of Ministers and that it falls into disuse if it is not then validated by the majority of Congress.
Since Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been at the head of the PP, the party has declared that its position on labor and social security issues is predictable: it can support projects in which both employers and unions participate, but not those in which the government only agrees with one of the parties to the social dialogue. This premise was reflected in the only major agreement reached so far under this legislature, the last part of the pension reform. Social Security agreed with employers and unions on several changes which, once they reached Parliament, found the approval of the PP. The agreement was signed and presented in La Moncloa on September 18, 2024, and the popular group supported the initiative in Congress in January of this year.
Certain parts of this agreement were difficult for the unions to digest and provoked criticism from several left-wing parties (given the strengthening it implies for mutual societies in the treatment of sick leave for trauma or the emphasis it places on incentives to delay retirement), but this did not prevent Sumar from accepting the agreement anyway. Party sources acknowledged the difficulty of their position on this issue, but chose to close ranks.
Since April 2022, when Núñez Feijóo took over as leader of the PP, there have been no other major agreements between the government, employers and unions. The rest of the agreements are limited to central agreements: from the 2023 pension reform (which aimed to strengthen the system’s income) to the reduction of working hours. The first flourished in Parliament before the summer elections of 2023, but the second failed before the right-wing majority that PP, Vox and Junts have formed in Congress since these elections.
Shortly before Núñez Feijóo took the reins of the PP, in February 2022, the vote on labor reform took place in Congress, the main change in labor since Pedro Sánchez led the government and Yolanda Díaz the labor portfolio. This profound change in the Workers’ Status had the support of employers and unions, but the PP rejected the initiative. The party was then still led by Pablo Casado and it was the erroneous vote of one of its deputies, Alberto Casero, which prevented the project from failing in Congress.
Now, PP sources indicate that they will not support the extension of bereavement leave to ten days, which leaves the initiative in the hands of the investiture majority. The right-wing parties in this group are the PNV and Junts: the Basque group indicates that it has received the text, transmitted by the Ministry of Labor, but that it is still analyzing it and prefers not to make an evaluation; The Catalan does not answer this newspaper’s question on this subject, but he formalized the severance of relations with the Government through a consultation with his bases. Since then, he has not only rejected the reduction in working hours, but also expressed his strong opposition to the government’s proposal to increase self-employment quotas.
Labor plans to advance the project in the form of a decree-law, so that it comes into force as soon as it is approved by the Council of Ministers and that it is declined if it is not validated a month later by the majority of Congress. This is a different strategy from that of the reduction of working hours, of a bill, which extended the deadlines until the initiative was submitted to the examination of the deputies. What both projects agree on is that, in the face of probable rejection, Díaz’s department seeks to make visible which parties are for and which are against, in a Parliament with a right-wing majority in which, a priori, it is very difficult for their proposals to prosper. And even more so if employers refuse them.
The ministry headed by the second vice-president and the employers are in their longest streak without an agreement: more than a year and a half without reaching an agreement. Of the six agreements concluded so far in Parliament, CEOE and Cepyme have only supported one and professional associations have made an effort to dilute its importance. This is a very different scenario from the last legislature, conditioned by the pandemic, where the entire social dialogue agreed 12 times out of 17. Díaz and business leader Antonio Garamendi have recently launched repeated accusations of electoralism at each other. She says he rejects everything to appear tougher and strengthen himself in the 2026 CEOE elections, and he claims that Díaz is only looking for advertisements to gain electoral points, with no real intention of reaching agreements.
Expansion and new permits
The text agreed by Labor and the unions would amend Article 37 of the Statute, which regulates weekly breaks, holidays and permits. It proposes a new article which establishes “ten working days for mourning in the event of the death of the spouse, partner or relatives up to the second degree of consanguinity”. The worker can distribute these ten days as he sees fit throughout the 28 days following the death.
In addition, the proposal also allows up to 15 working days for the care of a spouse, de facto partner or relatives up to the second degree by consanguinity, who require palliative care. The ministry considered the possibility that part of this new leave for palliative care would be covered by public coffers, as requested by employers, but union sources point out that it was ultimately not included in the text due to the lack of participation from companies. Likewise, the department of Díaz is offering a new permit to accompany a euthanized person. The unions and the ministry assume, as usual, that modifications to the text could be made during the parliamentary process. These changes did not convince Junts to reduce the workday.
“We cannot accept the ministry’s proposal on permits in any of its aspects,” said the employers’ associations in a statement, after the last meeting in which they participated to negotiate this measure. According to them, this dialogue “at no time gave rise to a negotiation table” and they considered that “the meetings held were the result of complaints raised by the employer representation after the surprise announcement precisely outside the social dialogue, discontent which the unions then joined”. At the same time, they declared “regret” that Labor had decided to “end these tripartite consultations”.
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