The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has defended this Thursday that the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is "more right than a saint" in his comments on sick leave and has lashed out against the "easy banner politics," which she considers "absurd," criticizing "petty rulers" who get "indignant" in the name of workers and then "legislate against them."
"When one is close to reality and talks to companies, when one talks to the self-employed, one knows what is happening with the problem of sick leave. Obviously, President Feijóo is not talking about a person who is sick. He is not referring to a pregnant woman if she has some complication or is in the last months of her pregnancy. We are not talking about a person who has cancer, who has a sudden illness, who has any problem," the Madrid president claimed during a forum organized by the newspaper '20 minutos'.
These words come after Feijóo described absenteeism as "a cancer" and questioned whether an employee on sick leave should receive the same salary as when they are working. Regarding this controversy, Ayuso insisted that the PP is committed to "balance," defending public-private collaboration and rejecting "savage capitalism."
In contrast, she accused the central government of promoting "constant disincentive in everything" and applying "indiscriminate" taxes along with regulations that she has described as absurd and which, in her opinion, "go against reality."
According to her, these policies often lead to employers who want to hire and "cannot" due to these obstacles. "Lately, in Spain, legislation is only made to make hiring suspicious. To make those who have two or three employees very suspicious. And if they have a small profit margin, to make them a person to be persecuted," she lamented.
In her opinion, this approach responds to "communism" which, she says, is promoted by the Executive. In this context, she gave the example of the self-employed, of whom she said they are "the people who have the fewest sick days," something that, in her opinion, shows that there are many cases that "could be avoided."
"Furthermore, it is unfair to his own colleagues, because when a person stops going to work, that work falls on many colleagues at times and it affects his own company. Because if the company is small and has an absenteeism problem, it can end up closing. Who loses? We all lose," she stressed.
Díaz Ayuso added that, within the Community of Madrid's responsibilities, they try to manage sick leave along with doctors and mutual insurance companies, but she warned that "balance and competitiveness" are lost when only the idea of "working less and earning more" is promoted.