“We are aware of the need for a representative social dialogue”

2023-07-13 14:46:09

Ten days from general elections of the July 23thhe PSOE has launched a nod to small and medium-sized companies and a notice to the great CEOE employers. transport ministers, Raquel Sánchezand Industry, Hector Gomez, have supported Conpymes, an organization founded in 2021 as an alternative to the until now only legally recognized entity as state representative of entrepreneurs, in its general assembly. “We are aware of the need for a representative social dialogue,” said Gómez before the enthusiastic leaders of Conpymes.

Get recognition of “most representative social agent“and thus be able to sit face to face with the CEOE, CCOO y UGT to negotiate reforms such as the labor o la de pensions is Conpymes’ main claim. This entity has been sponsored and promoted by the Catalan employer Pimec, which in 2019 managed – after almost 12 years of legal litigation – to be equated in Catalonia with the historic employer Foment del Treball.

Conpymes brings together sectoral organizations such as COAG (farmers and ranchers) and Fenadismer (carriers), the Uatae automobile company, territorial employers’ associations such as the Catalan Pimec, the Valencian Unión Gremial, the Balearic Pimeb and the Castilian-Leonese CES, among others, with more than two Millions of associated companies and freelancers.

In the same way that there is a recognized bipartisanship among the unions, Conypmes aspires to the same with the CEOE, since it considers that a neighborhood business cannot be represented by the same one that responds to El Corte Inglés and that this results in a bias legislation contrary to the interests of SMEs. Currently, formally, the legally recognized representative of SMEs is cepymean organization dependent on and integrated into the CEOE.

“We need to be in social dialogue, […] that it be democratized” and stop being “the monopoly of a few”, has affirmed the president of Conpymes, Jose Maria Torresduring his intervention. From the Executive they have picked up the gauntlet for the future, although during the current legislature they have not moved to advance towards said homologation. The Minister of Industry has opened the door to “incorporating agents such as SMEs”, stressing that they provide “added value” and that “the closer the business community, the better the decisions we make”.

Delinquency and second chance law

Conpymes, in addition to its place at the same table as CEOE, has also demanded new measures from the PSOE in terms of delinquency and law of second opportunity if the Government revalidates. Torres has called for measures to penalize late payments, since he has denounced that large corporations finance themselves at zero cost at the expense of deliberately taking time to pay their smaller suppliers.

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On the first matter, the Socialists limit themselves to carrying in their program that “we will continue working to reduce delinquency in commercial operations, as a necessity to increase the competitiveness and viability of our SMEs and the self-employed.”

And on the second chance law, the leader of Conpymes has called for a new regulation that gives facilities to a businessman who fails so that he can start another project again. And that failed attempt -and his accumulated debt- do not condemn him “to the submerged economy and social exclusion”. A second chance law is not explicitly contemplated in the PSOE program, although the Minister of Industry has stated that they are “perfectly aware” of the problem and that “we are going to be allies”.