Díaz guarantees a reduction in the workday to 37.5 hours: "It will take as long as it takes, but we will win."

Second Vice President of the Government and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, stated this Sunday in Seville that the central government will ultimately achieve a reduction in the working week to 37.5 hours, stating that "it will take as long as it takes, but we will win."

This was expressed at an event promoted by the Sumar Movement and also supported by IU, focused on defending the reduction of the working day, without reducing wages, which the Government has embodied in a bill approved by the Council of Ministers on May 6. This event coincides with the arrival of the bill in Congress, where it currently lacks the support it needs to prosper.

For Díaz, the reduction of the working day "is not just another economic variable," but rather "a driving force of hope for the entire country and the world." Thus, she wondered "why they are so determined to oppose the reduction of the working day when the average in our country is already 38.2 hours."

"Why, Mr. Moreno Bonilla, if there are thousands and thousands of collective agreements, even in Andalusia, that are below 40 hours and already have a 37.5-hour week? Why are they so opposed to it if public employees already have this reduction?" Díaz continued, concluding that "they are so opposed because they know it is a message of hope for the social majority of this country."

The leader emphasized, addressing the detractors of this measure, that "they already told us that wage devaluation was necessary," or that "crises were resolved by laying people off, mass layoffs." They also "told us, in their model, that work had to be made precarious, that there was no work to go around," and she pointed out that "Fátima Báñez (the PP's Labor Minister) already told us that we had to choose between a junk contract or unemployment."

"We told them it wasn't true," Díaz noted, adding that "although there is still much to be done, our country is currently below the European average for temporary employment." She argued that "the next step is the working day," that day "which has been the driving force behind all social mobilizations since the 19th century, and which sparked the first workers' demonstration on May 1st in Madrid."

Yolanda Díaz has argued that the Spanish government, despite internal discussions, has kept its word, so "it's now up to the political parties in Congress" to push this law through. In this regard, she called on the "Andalusian class unions" and workers in the region to mobilize in defense of the reduction of the working day, "to tell Moreno Bonilla how they are going to vote."

A measure, she also pointed out, "deeply feminist", since "we are telling the more than 300,000 Andalusian part-time workers and the 2.5 million part-time workers across the country that they will also have rights", a point on which she noted that "we are correcting in a feminist way the gender impact that part-time has in our country", since these workers "will also see their wages rise across our country", and she stressed that "many part-time contracts will directly become permanent" with this measure.

Yolanda Díaz added that there will be "a radical change in timekeeping so that in real time, there will be no more need to enter the factory, sign the number of hours worked, and ensure that everything is complied with." Thus, "in an interoperable, digital manner, the Labor Inspectorate will be able to know in real time the working hours of any worker across the country," she noted.

In this context, he maintained that upon his arrival at the Ministry of Labor, "in Spain, six million irregular, unpaid hours of overtime were being worked per week," while "after enormous work by the Labor Inspectorate, today two and a half million are being worked."

"It's curious that the right never talks about the fiscal cost of reducing these overtime hours, since in your country 293,000 unpaid overtime hours are worked each week," he said, urging Moreno to "get his act together and fight to ensure that these irregularities in Andalusia end, so that working people can live."

The leader also used the event to link working conditions with the 21st PP Congress, scheduled for July 4-6, which "is about determining whether Ayuso (President of the Community of Madrid) or Feijóo (national leader) is in charge, but not about improving the lives of our country's workers."

During her speech in Seville, Díaz also called for "awareness of what is happening in the world and what we, the people here, represent," and warned of a "global agenda" against labor rights. She referred to "Trump's anti-unionization law" in the United States, to the fact that Argentine President Javier Milei "has just issued a law that restricts freedom of association and strikes," and to the fact that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is "attacking labor rights."