The dubious leader of the political opposition was missing, talking about sick leave in the country's companies to add nonsense to the debate, and that's where we are. It is not new for a high-ranking politician, when speaking in certain forums, to embrace arguments, ideas, and proposals that are to the liking of the respectable attendees.
However, on many occasions, this audacity shows a profound lack of knowledge and poor technical advice. Ignorance is bold, the popular saying warns us. Something of this has happened to Mr. Núñez Feijóo when he spoke at the Círculo de Empresarios Vascos and compared absenteeism with cancer – what will the workers who suffer from it think? –; or he said that more than a million people do not go to work daily, without distinguishing causes and without pointing out that the vast majority are justified absences.
It is surprising, to say the least, the coincidence in the postulates expressed by the top leader of the Popular Party in the same tendentious terms spread by business organizations and their satellites. It is equally surprising that he has not said a single word about the many people who go to work sick every day, forced by their superiors, out of fear, or out of commitment to the good progress of business projects.
Such was his audacity, and a sign of his ignorance, that he stated that workers receive the same salary when on medical leave as when working. An idea reinforced by his Praetorian guard in unison, who instead of advising the leader with honesty and loyalty, and telling him that he had made a mistake with such a statement, came out to reaffirm his error. Another demonstration of how far removed he is from reality.
This mistaken idea served him to propose to repeal by law the clauses included in some collective agreements that supplement the salaries of workers who are on leave to reduce the salary loss they suffer, which, incidentally, are the result of agreements between employers and unions in collective bargaining, and a sign of our autonomy. Because, although this political leader, who aspires to be president of the Government of our country, does not know it, being on leave has a cost for the majority of workers.
We are warned of the intentions of the Partido Popular if it comes to the responsibility of governing our country: To attack collective bargaining; to override social concertation – it will approve its repeal by law regardless of what social agents say within the framework of social dialogue –; and to snatch labor rights from workers. By the way, we don't have to remember much, it's what they did during their last government.
The statements by the leader of the Partido Popular that we have been able to read and hear have two virtues. Firstly, it places a very complex and sensitive issue – public health, illness, and occupational health – at the center of the public agenda, affecting millions of workers and with many different implications. Secondly, we now know what the leader of the Partido Popular and his entourage think: people who do not go to work are freeloaders and family doctors are not professionals as they give sick leave to anyone who enters their office.
A few days before Mr. Feijóo's statements, Mr. Garamendi, leader of the Spanish employers' association, referred to the decline in the quality of healthcare and its links to the increase in sick leave. The employers' leader would do well to remind the leader of the Partido Popular that his party colleagues who govern in the Autonomous Communities are responsible for the critical situation of public healthcare in general, and primary care in particular.
In other words, Mr. Feijóo and his party can do a lot to address this problem if the autonomies they govern make every effort to reduce public healthcare waiting lists, strengthen primary care and psychological care. Just as Mr. Garamendi can also do a lot by promoting forms of work organization among his constituents, the companies of this country, that put people, their health and well-being at the center, and not, as they always do, prioritize their interest and profit and loss account above all else, even above the physical, emotional or psychological health of workers.
From CCOO we have always considered that this problem must be addressed with rigor and responsibility, putting the health of working people at the center as Article 43 of the Constitution commits us to, and being aware of the financial challenge, but manageable, that the increase in the incidence of temporary incapacity represents. But in no case will we let any attempt to snatch our labor rights pass without a response, without mobilization. Whoever it comes from.
And I cannot resist the temptation to remind Mr. Garamendi and the organization he represents to take their responsibility for occupational safety and health more seriously, which is considerable. They flee and evade reaching any commitment both in institutional representation forums and in social dialogue, where after 18 months of negotiation they abandoned the table to reform the Law on Prevention of Occupational Risks, which was approved in 1995 and where working conditions are very different from those of today. Conditions then and now that generate tens of thousands of occupational diseases, which their mutual insurance companies do not recognize and which are treated and paid for by public health systems.
There is room for debate, but we ask that this debate be serious and with serious people. Comisiones Obreras has 116,000 delegates in workplaces across the country, and from real, daily, and direct experience, it has drawn up dozens of proposals to protect health and safety and enforce regulations. Let's start there. Audacity and ignorance, please, stay away.
about the author:
Mariano Sanz is Secretary of Occupational Health and Environment of CCOO.