Employers had already warned all together yesterday. CEOE, Introduction of Treball And my pocketand the association representing the self-employed ATA: PSOE and Sumar’s programmatic agreement “will have a negative impact on the companies’ activities (…) and therefore economy is growing And Job creation in Spain”. And this Wednesday, signed by mass consumption sector (supermarkets, clothing chains, big business…), in particular: “The competitiveness of the Spanish economy will suffer,” he warned president of the AECOC, Javier Campo. “It’s impossible to compete when you have low productivity and high labor costs,” he explained.
According to the data of this organization, which is one of the largest business associations in the country and one of the main representatives of the mass consumption sector, this industry accounts for 25% of the total consumption. Gross domestic product (GDP) National. In other words, the negative impact on the accounts of the largest companies will have a significant impact on the country’s economy.
Thus, after their conferences at the 38th AECOC Large Consumption Congress held in Zaragoza on Wednesday and Thursday, the president and general manager of the association, José María Bonmatithe possibility of a gradual reduction of the working day to 35 hours per week, or minimum wage continues to increase.
“There is a sharp decline in working hours per employee; this, in the context of low productivity as in Spain, will seriously affect the competitiveness of the country, and this is a scenario that will continue in the medium term. This is the price,” said Campo, who took the opportunity to recall his earlier initiative France years ago, when I was a manager, Carrefour. “The 35 hours coming to France didn’t help much, productivity dropped tremendously,” he warned. “This is a situation that will put us in a difficult situation for the mass consumption sector, as well as for the rest of the economy. very strong loss of competitiveness“, added.
According to him, tackling the productivity problem should come first Increasing the workforce in scientific and technological fields via FP, Increase in average size of Spanish companies, reducing housing costs or increase in employability rate (“Only 55% of working-age people do this,” he gave as an example).
Reputation impact
Especially according to the data in the table, Spain’s productivity is 24% lower than the eurozone average. In short, he concluded, forcing such labor-intensive companies to pay their employees more for fewer hours “is a bad way to approach the future.”
Bonmatí added that it is also so because of where it places the company and the entrepreneur in this discussion. “They will incorporate some of them” ideological bias input“This puts the company in the limelight from a reputational standpoint,” lamented AECOC’s chief executive. He took the opportunity to recall that there were other aspects of this agreement between the parties with which they were not comfortable, for example intensification of environmental requirements wave higher tax pressure.
Moreover, both representatives of the mass consumption sector are convinced that: price increase If he hadn’t touched it yet, he would be nearing his ceiling by now. Estimated growth rate in 2024 general inflation (according to their estimates, the average will be 3.6%), but this slowdown is especially food land.