The Government not only puts itself in profile before the employment regulation file (ERE) in Ford, but also justifies that the company is going to get rid of 1,124 workers through early retirements from the age of 53 and incentive plans for reasons of flexibility. A decision that clashes flatly with the approach on which the pension reform revolves and that is based on the need to increase the workforce and delay the effective retirement age to guarantee the financial sustainability of the system.
Consulted about the agreement on Tuesday, from different ministries in the economic area of the Government declined to make assessments on internal issues of the companies. A silence that contrasts with the fierce criticism that members of the Council of Ministers have leveled against other important business movements that have occurred recently.
Although the Minister of Social Security, Jose Luis Escrivs took a position yesterday when defending that Ford’s case will be justified for reasons of flexibility. The architect of the pension reform assured that there are fewer and fewer cases of this type and the effective retirement age is increasing (passes 64 years). That is, he said, the right direction.
In any case, he asked for a reflection on work among those over 55 in Spain, with an activity rate lower than the European average, and stressed that in many sectors the transfer of knowledge must materialize through labor and career relations. professional that require adjustments.
Precisely, the Minister of Economy in the Valencian Government, Rafa Clement, highlights the contradiction involved in approving early retirement at age 53 in the midst of a debate on raising the retirement age to make the pension system sustainable. It is not good news that at age 53 a person stops working, he affirms. If we are in the debate that people retire after 60, it is not positive if what is wanted is to rebalance the system, he insists, and more so at a time when the administrations are fighting to get the maximum number of people are working, join Social Security and contribute, reports noa of the tower.
The truth is that, to date, Minister Escriv has defended the incentives for late retirement. In fact, they became his workhorse during the negotiation of the first part of the pension reform with employers and unions. He managed to introduce changes on delayed, early and forced retirement to bring the real retirement age closer to the ordinary one, with the aim of neutralizing spending and shoring up accounts.
In parallel, within the framework of the negotiation for the design of the new ERTE mechanism -baptized as RED, which was born as a solution for internal flexibility and stabilization of employment after the shock of the pandemic- it was precisely Escriv who defended that these processes should become a kind of bridge between companies to avoid, through training, and requalification, that workers, especially the most veteran, fell into inactivity in the final stretch of their professional careers.
Maroto’s warning
The Government’s non-position regarding early retirement at Ford contrasts with the statements of maroto kings, then Minister of Industry, once this ERE was announced. Public aid to boost the electric transition of the car is conditional on maintaining employment, she said.
The aid to which he was referring is the European funds of the PERTE VEC (of the Electric and Connected Vehicle). In its first call, the multinational received 106.34 million. But he renounced them because the investments for the new electric cars that will be made in Almussafes could not be carried out before mid-2025, as required by that plan.
Now, they could even be delayed until 2028, which is the new limit that will be set in the second round of the plan.
Industry sources pointed out yesterday to this newspaper that the impact that the ERE could have on the aid, since that call is still taking shape. Also, what volume of employment was Maroto referring to? When the second PERTE window opens, the ERE will have been signed for several months and hundreds of workers will have left the company.
In fact, the layoffs will take place between May 2 and December 31, but it is foreseeable that they will occur much earlier since the incentivized redundancy plan adds 40,000 euros for those who leave before July and 20,000 if it is before October.
The current candidate for mayor of Madrid also forgot the precedent of Seat in 2022. The company, together with VW and 60 other companies, make up the Fast Future Forward (F3) project, which will electrify the Landaben and Martorell plants and add a battery plant in Sagunto. The planned investment is 10,000 million.
After a last and controversial phase, the F3 project obtained 400 million euros from the first PERTE. And this after Seat signed the new collective agreement that, among other measures, provides for the progressive extinction (non-traumatic) of 1,330 jobs. The argument is to adjust the Martorell staff to the less manpower that will be required by the small electricians that will be set up there from 2025. No one from the government said anything.despite the fact that the agreement was closed in July and the PERTE bases had been published four months earlier.
Perhaps because they know -and they knew- that the electrification of the automobile will claim thousands of jobs in factories, although part will be offset by other activities in the value chain. Wayne Griffiths, president of Seat Cupra, said it and the then president of Ford of Europe, Stuart Rowley, announced it after assigning the new electric vehicles to Valencia. So the former minister knew this when she visited Almussafes in February and said they were working with Ford to get him to apply for the second PERTE, that he would cover all his needs and even qualify him for more funding.
The intention is not to repeat the failure of the initial call, which allocated only 800 million of 2,975 million. For this reason, in addition to extending the term until 2028, the conditions will be made more flexible, admitting individual projects compared to the complex associations (with 40% of SMEs) of before. There will even be its own line for batteries, which will open earlier and provides for aid of up to 350 million if they are located in low-income areas. This is the case of the Envision gigafactory in Cáceres.
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