MADRID, Jan. 9 (EUROPA PRESS) – The president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, denounced this Tuesday that there has been no social dialogue with the Government in relation to the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI), but rather “threats” and “blackmail” so that businessmen sign a 4% increase.
“What is funny and surprising is that if this is called social dialogue, then let them call him, but it is not. I believe that what happened yesterday is called a threat,” Garamendi criticized in statements to RNE reported by Europa Press .
The business leader was thus referring to the statements of the Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey, ensuring that if the CEOE did not support a 4% increase in the SMI to be in a tripartite agreement, the Government would be “more ambitious” and would go to a greater rise.
“The Secretary of State yesterday said that we should be pragmatic. What is pragmatic? It is a threat, it is blackmail. That is to say, it is either this or it is more. But what is the Government’s criterion? The Government’s criterion should be one. It’s not that if you’re not there, I’m still going to put in more,” denounced the leader of the employers’ association.
The president of the CEOE has once again demanded the indexation of the SMI to public contracts and bonuses for the rural sector, measures that have been denied for now.
“The Ministry of Labor, and also the minister, think it is good that it be indexed and, however, now they say no because there is another part of the Government that says no. Well, clarify yourselves, say what you have to say, but no tell me to apply pragmatism, because the one who applies pragmatism is me,” he stressed.
Asked if businessmen would be willing to accept a 4% increase in the SMI, Garamendi indicated that the CEOE has made a proposal “that is out there” and that exceeds inflation. “We have made a proposal of 3.5%, along those lines, when inflation is going to close this year in less quantity,” he said.
But, for Garamendi, the problem “is not whether it is one amount or another”, but that businessmen have been asking for “years” that public administrations assume the costs of raising the SMI in their public contracts instead of charging them on companies. and nothing has changed about it.
In this sense, he has reproached the Government for denying the indexation of the SMI in public procurement based on the need to balance its accounts and prevent the deficit from increasing. “There’s the trap. That is, it tells you that I can’t, but I’m going to put it on you, where I’m going to leave your company’s accounts completely destroyed and where I’m going to create a real problem for you from the from the point of view of what private employment is”, he failed.
Furthermore, he has warned that the SMI “is going beyond the agreements and “absolutely putting pressure” on all salary tables when many of these agreements have already been agreed with the unions. “It seems that some who do not pay a salary in their lifetime are going to decide what the rest of us should do,” he criticized.
MORE STABILITY
Regarding those who say that they do not want to sign the increase in the SMI to avoid a ‘photo’ with the Government, Garamendi has pointed out that the CEOE has signed agreements “whenever possible, in more delicate or less delicate moments.”
“With the labor reform, there were many people who did not like it and who told me that I was doing it wrong (…) I do not have politics in mind. I say it with complete clarity, I am not a politician, we are not in politics , we are on the margins of that space,” he assured.
Garamendi has defended the need for a greater climate of stability for businessmen and has also criticized “the famous royal omnibus decrees.” “We don’t like them, they sneak in a lot of subjects where you have to take this just because and everything in bulk and nothing can be changed,” he denounced.
