This remained a big wound of Yolanda Diaz’s labor reform. This was the reason why the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), EH Bildu and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) opposed the law in Congress, which would not have passed if the PP MP had not voted “yes”. error. Increase severance pay It is also the repeated request of the unions to the government, who understand that they cannot continue to be the same progressive executive that Mariano Rajoy left them.

But until now, and after categorically refusing to consider them in the labor reform, the Minister of Labor has only launched trial balloons in this regard. In October, he proposed at a conference, the cost of dismissal should depend on the personal situation of the employee. In June, he told a congressional committee that it should be modernized and brought “to what’s being done in Europe,” that is, a “restorative and deterrent” layoff.

He never once announced the establishment of any negotiating table on this issue, did not talk about the timing and did not formulate the idea.

However, even after several resolutions on this matter and his speech this Wednesday at the Congress of Deputies, where he stressed that the dismissal is “too cheap” and that it therefore “pays off”, it became much clearer from his team: Work will change severance pay current if recommended by the Committee on Social Rights in his opinion, which is close to being famous. “We will adhere to the opinion of the committee,” sources in his department say.

The Committee on Social Rights will announce “soon”

It is planned that Committee for Social Rights, a body composed of experts and dependent on the Council of Europe – an international organization based in Strasbourg, whose members are 46 European countries, but not belonging to the European Union – will soon issue an opinion in connection with the fact that both CCOO and UGT have filed two claims, to condemn that Spain does not respect the protection that should be given to workers against unfair dismissal.

The Council’s decision will not be binding. Spain will not be obliged to comply with it, but a conflict might arise if the sentences of the judges went in one direction and the Spanish legislation went in the other.

Committee UGT’s claim accepted for consideration in the same week that it was decided that France was violating the right to protection in the event of dismissal, which is included in article 24 of the European Social Charter and Convention 158 of the International Labor Organization (ILO). That is why the union hopes that in the case of Spain it will move in the same direction.

For the union severance pay must be sufficiently reparative and is proportional to the damage that it does to the working person, and still not so, especially for those who have worked for a short time. The employee or worker will be harmed if they lose their job arbitrarily, and the cost of layoffs has depreciated over the past decades,” they pointed out to UGT in their lawsuit.

“The current legislation in Spain regarding the guarantees provided to workers who have suffered unfair dismissal is incompatible with the guarantees provided by the Revised European Social Charter, as interpreted by the Committee on several occasions, knowingly and expressly, in this regard,” the statement said. were also announced by the Workers’ Commission (CCOO).

On the other hand, CCOO also understands that in order to comply with it, restore wage processing, that is, those salaries that the employee did not receive from the moment of dismissal until his dismissal are qualified as unfair and which were something ordinary before the labor reform of 2012. Unions were satisfied that these two parts, some of the most disruptive in the 2012 labor reform, were not affected by the 2021 reform, but continue to believe that it is necessary to address both issues “immediately” at the social dialogue table and adapt this issue to current legislation.

Now the UGT believes that the government should not object to the increase in severance pay, primarily because it was one of their campaign commitments. That’s why, They hope it’s not a campaign promise Diaz, but also the observance of the programmatic intentions of the government as a whole, in addition to what they understand by the definition of the Committee on Social Rights of the Council of Europe.

Yolanda Diaz advocates ‘a la carte’ compensation

How can a layoff be changed? How much can compensation be increased? Some of the ideas that Diaz has articulated in recent months on this subject have opened doors for adapt the compensation to the age of the worker, because in the event of dismissal of a prepared and trained young person, he will be able to easily return to the labor market, unlike an older person.

On the opposition side, the ERC, Bildu and BNG proposed in a bill they filed in Congress in May, restore compensation 45 days a year worked in cases of unfair dismissal – now it is 33 days up to a maximum of 24 monthly payments – as well as the aforementioned salary payments.

This Monday, on the contrary, decision of the Supreme Court of Barcelona Diaz served to have the courts say what she “protected”. The Civil Court established compensation for unfair dismissal of more than 33 days worked per year, now statutory, in a pioneering judgment based on the fact that “an increasing number of judgments allowing for the possibility of recognizing workers’ compensation above that established by law, based on the provisions of ILO Convention No. 158 and Article 24 of the European Social Charter”.

Nevertheless, The work did not formulate a single concrete proposal, in addition to recent statements by Diaz, who again this Tuesday at a press conference after the meeting of the Council of Ministers insisted that compensation should not be limited to a fixed amount, as is now the case in Spain. It is also unclear what deadlines the ministry will meet if the Committee on Social Rights comes forward in the coming weeks with a demand for increased compensation for dismissal. Given the regional elections in May and the general elections in December, as well as the semi-drafted Charter of the Scientist and the Charter of the Artist, an important change in legislation seems difficult. Meanwhile, unions remain hopeful.