Mercadona's employers' association mobilizes with political parties to defeat the reduction in working hours in Congress.

The supermarket employers' association Asedas , which represents the giant Mercadona and other major players in the sector such as Dia, Lidl, and Ahorramas , is taking action against the reduction in working hours that the government has just submitted to the Congress of Deputies. The business organization, part of the CEOE ( Spanish Economic and Monetary Union), is mobilizing to defeat the bill by promoting support among parliamentary groups for any comprehensive amendment proposed in Parliament. The retail lobby is working hard against a measure they consider detrimental to one of the main drivers of employment in Spain.

The president of Asedas, former CiU leader Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida , has sent a letter to the Second Vice President of the Government and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz , in which he expresses his organization's "firm opposition" to the reduction of the working week to 37.5 hours. In the letter, he not only expresses his rejection of the content of the regulation, but also the "deep discontent" of employers regarding the way it has been presented to society.

Specifically, he criticizes "the way in which the bill has been presented, as an initiative intended to benefit, above all, the millions of workers in commerce and distribution, as if, over many years of fruitful collective bargaining, their needs had not been taken into account, when employers and workers' representatives have agreed on the best possible conditions for both in the current collective agreements."

Duran i Lleida accuses the vice president of displaying a "profound lack of understanding of the socioeconomic and labor reality of distribution," projecting "a negative and unjustified image" that, the president of Asedas continues, "ignores the service we provide to society in our establishments, their extremely long opening hours (to meet all types of family and social needs) and the enormous flexibility with which we must adapt to the needs of the citizens we serve."

The president of the supermarket employers' association also criticizes Díaz for the "lack of dialogue" with the business representatives and announces that Asedas will request "all parliamentary groups in the Cortes to support the amendments to the entire project ." A mobilization in line with the pressure being exerted at the national level by the CEOE and the Catalan employers' association Foment del Treball , especially with Junts , which has already announced that it will reject the initiative if the Government does not grant better adaptation conditions to Catalan companies.

Mercadona promised the reduction

It is striking, in any case, that this public expression of rejection comes from the Mercadona employers' association, when the company headed by Juan Roig has been, precisely, one of the large Spanish companies in the retail sector that, along with Inditex , got ahead of the Government by announcing its intention to reduce the working hours of its workforce more than a year ago.

Specifically, in December 2023, Mercadona committed to reducing its employees' working hours by 2025. The agreement for the 2024-2028 period set a maximum working week of 40 hours per year, the maximum permitted by law. However, it included a new clause stating that "the company undertakes to reduce its annual working hours during 2025." The text—published in the Official State Gazette (BOE)—adds that "in the event of regulatory changes in this area, the provisions of the law will apply."

To move toward this reduction in working hours, the company committed to worker representatives—from the CCOO, UGT, and the Independent Trade Union of the Valencian Community (SI)—to activate an observatory as a negotiation forum where they would study how to reduce working hours and analyze their distribution throughout the year. However, more than a year later, negotiations have stalled because management is awaiting the outcome of the parliamentary process.

"The logical thing to do is to wait ; getting ahead of the curve is not a good plan," sources familiar with Mercadona's strategy recently consulted on the matter admitted to this newspaper. If the reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours per week goes ahead as approved by the Council of Ministers, Mercadona will be fully affected because it will have to cut its workers' hours by half an hour per day (counted against the annual working day) in order to update the working conditions of its more than 100,000 employees by December 31, 2025 at the latest. That is why the pressure from Asedas , together with that being exerted by the CEOE , of which Mercadona is also a member as an associated company, is essential to stop Yolanda Díaz 's initiative or, at least, mitigate its impact on the company.