I wish it would be the beginning of something but I doubt it will.
Businessmen in Spain sees the worker as another machine in the factory and a lot of them work actively to fired the workers that try to unionize. I talk from experience having worked in 2 some what small (50 to 150 workers), family-owned companies, where in one, the union representative was the son of the owner and in the other there wasn't any union because 2 years before I entered, the person who tried to create a union office in the company was fired and reported to the police with false pretences.
You have exceptions of course but the vast majority are very very conservative with ideas between right wing or extreme right wing.
My opinion is that the wealth, like in any place, is very very bad balanced.
Studies are viewed as useless, because they won't give you a good job or because there are some part of society that sees them as something not cool.
We don't have a solid STEM-based industry like for example Germany or France.
Also, We are highly dependant from tourism, being tourism the largest sector in our GDP (in some regions is the 25% )and we don't re-invesment that wealth in R&D, which is arround 1,25%.
Plus political instability from various populism movements is the perfect mix for a country stuck in time. Without any project of future.
My feeling is: spanish business is a somewhat feudal system.
I do not believe that business owners are trying to maximize the efficacy of their resources. If it were so, this kind of proposals would be accepted by the business community, given research on the topic. I believe this proposal is a tremendous opportunity.
I believe business want to control people. As such, one less day is less control. In exchange for Business controlling your life you get different degrees of financial security. Feudalism.
This attitude is reinforced by tradition and misconception. And both employees and employers are at fault. Gee, I am at fault! I haven't worked a 40 hour week in my entire working life. On my defense I would say that I have sent juniors and interns home... But still.
I have also said that research on the topic is not solid, but of this proposal were to be properly implemented could help solve that issue.
Politicians doing a proper policy implementation is a different can of worms. I was hoping that some progressive business would actually start doing 4 hour weeks, rather than a top down approach.
I agree with you. I didn't know how to label it but feudalism sounds right.
And I think that employees are greater at fault that employers. We must know when to say enough is enough.
In the second company, I had a couple of interns and I saw that the first week they where doing like 1 or 2 hours every day more than they should by contract (4 hours/day contract). I invited them both to a coffee outside the company and talk about them about doing more hours for free.
I still have contact with one of them and before this thing of Covid exploded, we talked and said that he had with his intern the same conversation I had with him about free hours.
I think that we need a strong class / work mentality, something lost in recent years, and that it comes from education.
Other thing most people don't understand is that unpaid overtime is actually tax fraud.
I have never seen paid overtime in Spain. I read someone in HN saying she got paid overtime tho.
Businessmen in Spain sees the worker as another machine in the factory and a lot of them work actively to fired the workers that try to unionize. I talk from experience having worked in 2 some what small (50 to 150 workers), family-owned companies, where in one, the union representative was the son of the owner and in the other there wasn't any union because 2 years before I entered, the person who tried to create a union office in the company was fired and reported to the police with false pretences.
You have exceptions of course but the vast majority are very very conservative with ideas between right wing or extreme right wing.
My opinion is that the wealth, like in any place, is very very bad balanced. Studies are viewed as useless, because they won't give you a good job or because there are some part of society that sees them as something not cool. We don't have a solid STEM-based industry like for example Germany or France. Also, We are highly dependant from tourism, being tourism the largest sector in our GDP (in some regions is the 25% )and we don't re-invesment that wealth in R&D, which is arround 1,25%.
Plus political instability from various populism movements is the perfect mix for a country stuck in time. Without any project of future.