The former minister Fátima Báñez is one of the people who died in the railway accident this Tuesday in Urda (Toledo).
According to what sources close to the former minister have confirmed to DEMÓCRATA, Báñez was traveling on the derailed Iryo train shortly before 9:00 a.m. this Wednesday.
Báñez was Minister of Employment and Social Security during the two governments of Mariano Rajoy, between December 2011 and June 2018. After the motion of censure that made Pedro Sánchez president, she left politics and began developing her business activity.
In December 2019 she joined the Board of Directors of Laboratorios Rovi as an independent external director, and in April 2020 she joined the board of trustees of the Fundación CEOE. Until now she chaired the foundation of the Spanish employers' association.
Deputy with Aznar, minister with Rajoy
After taking on various responsibilities within the Andalusian PP, Báñez reached Congress after being elected deputy for Huelva in the 2000 general elections, which propelled José María Aznar's first absolute majority.
In those years she was elected budget spokesperson for the Popular Group and coordinator of the economic area of the 'populars'.
With Mariano Rajoy's arrival at Moncloa, at the end of 2011, she was appointed Minister of Employment and Social Security, a post she held until the former president's departure with the 2018 motion of censure.
She was responsible for the government's labor policy at one of the most complicated moments in recent economic history, with the country submerged in a deep crisis after the bursting of the real estate bubble and the debt crisis in European Union countries.
When she took office, at the end of 2011, registered unemployment in Spain exceeded 4.4 million people registered with employment services. It went on to exceed 5 million in February 2013, then beginning a downward trend. Báñez left office with 3.1 million unemployed people.
The most controversial reforms: labor and pensions
Although her name is not so intrinsically linked to them, she was the minister who promoted what were possibly the most controversial and far-reaching reforms of Mariano Rajoy's Government: the 2012 labor reform and the pension reform a year later. The first of them led to the last general strike supported by the major unions, on November 14, 2012.
The reform reduced severance pay for dismissal from 45 to 33 days per year worked, up to a maximum of 24 monthly payments, making easier the economic reasons that allow it to be justified and eliminating administrative authorization for collective dismissals.
It also ended the ultra-activity of the agreements, priority was given to company agreements over sectoral ones and the employer's ability was facilitated to modify substantial working conditions, such as the workday, the schedule or wages.
Regarding the pension reform, it ended its revaluation in accordance with the CPI to link it to an indicator related to its financial situation --in practice it condemned pensions to a rise of 0.25%-- and projected a decrease in the initial pension for future retirees.
Finally, the Government was forced to delay the entry into force of this last measure and to partially recover the increase in pensions with the CPI. Both measures were repealed later when the PSOE came to Government.
However, the main changes of the labor reform remain in force today, among them the facilities for dismissing and its severance pay, which was not the subject of discussion in the labor reform that the current Vice President of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, approved in 2021.