Working week to reduce to 38.5 hours

The Plenary Session of Congress has approved a non-law proposal Sumar to promote the reduction of the working week to 38,5 hours this year without loss of salary, despite VOX voting against the plan and the PP and Junts abstaining, the remaining parties had sufficient majority, with 169 in favour, 33 against, and 142 abstaining.

This is the first initiative on reducing working hours that the Lower House has debated and voted on after PSOE and Sumar included it in their Government agreement. Specifically, the approved proposal urges the Government to “urgently” open a process of social dialogue that will culminate in the modification of the Workers’ Statute, as well as the relevant provisions, to incorporate a progressively applied reduction in the working week, starting by setting a limit of 38,5 effective hours in 2024.

The proposal that has been approved is the second initiative that Sumar registers in Congress for this matter in just over two months. The one that has been supported this Thursday is less demanding than the one presented in December 2023, when the Government was urged to undertake the reduction, without appealing to social dialogue, and setting a limit of 37,5 hours per week, opening the door to an agreement with the social agents to go down until 32 hours.

Congress’s support for coincides with the negotiations between the Ministry of Labour and social agents to digitise the time record, so that it can no longer be recorded on paper, and so that the Labour Inspection can have remote access to it to ensure that the reduction in working hours is met.

In the text of the non-law proposal, it is recalled that it has been more than 104 years since a reduction in the maximum working day below eight hours a day has been undertaken and more than 40 years without the 40-hour threshold being altered, despite the “very different economic, labour and social conditions.”

Sumar believes that this “freezing” of the duration of the maximum working day places Spain “far from a correct application of article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Yolanda Díaz’s training points out that there are more than 10,5 million salaried people in the private sector who have a regular working day above 37,5 hours on average per week.

The reasons that justify the reduction in working hours, according to the confederal group, include an equal distribution of care tasks, a greater conciliation between work and personal life, a decrease in exposure to occupational risks, and better physical health conditions. and mental, a positive environmental impact and more time that can be allocated to training, leisure, or social participation.

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