//
you're reading...
Labour market reform, Spain

Golden goodbyes for bosses as workers fast tracked to dole

Labour reforms make firing Spanish workers cheap. But it’s still a golden hand-shake for their bosses.

It’s yet another case of one rule for the many and another for the lucky few.

Spain’s right-wing government recently passed changes to labour laws that will make it much easier and cheaper for bosses to fire their workers.

The new rules, which are currently going through parliamentary approval, will see severance pay for new open-ended contracts cut to 33 days from 45 days for every year worked and big cuts to the maximum level of pay-outs, to 24 months’ pay, from 42 months previously.

What’s more if an employer’s revenues have been falling for at least nine-month period they will be able to pay staff the lower 20 days’ severance pay per year worked, and a maximum of a year’s salary.

Companies in difficulty will also be able to opt out of colletive bargaining agreements and alter working conditons by, for example, reducing wages or changing schedules.

Well that’s the picture for the 99%.

While Spain’s 23% unemployment queue has never been closer for workers who have to get by on an average of around Euros 1,000 a month net, the millionaires at the top echelons of Spain’s largest companies are very comfortably continuing their bubble-wrapped existence.

A significant number of CEOs in the Ibex 35 stock market index of biggest capitalised corporations have several years of guaranteed salary in the event of dismissal or even if they decide to leave the company voluntarily, provided they claim the functions for which they were hired have been altered, according to lainformacion.com, a Spanish finance title.

It’s the banks, authors of Spain’s housing debt and speculation fuelled bust, that remain the most generous in their golden-handshakes.

And Santander, the country’s and Europe’s largest bank by stock market capitalisation, remains at the top of the cream-for-fat-cats-come-what-may league.

A decade ago Angel Corcostegui, the then CEO walked away with a settlement of Euros 108 million. In January, as if just to prove that for the world of finance nothing has changed, Francisco Luzon, number three at the bank, left the organization with an accumulated pension fund of Euros 56 million, plus about Euros 9 million in extras.

At Banco Sabadell, no less than 24 executives have untouchable compensation packages, while it’s the same story for 13 high flyers at BBVA. Contractual indemnity clauses are also extended to 43 members of BBVA’s lower management, and in some cases the protections stand even if the person resigns.

About revoltingeurope

Writer on Europe's Left, trade union and social movements @tomgilltweets or email [email protected]

Discussion

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Twitter Updates

  • Credit Suisse ‘helped US tax evaders’ on.ft.com/1eh2BxQ #banksters 2 days ago
  • Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers salon.com/2014/02/23/wor… #unions 2 days ago
  • A Week in Revolting Europe paper.li/tomgilltweets/… #politics #austerity #banks #unemployment #poverty #inequality #troika #protest 5 days ago
  • Good indicator of how the crisis is hitting the 1%: Ferrari nets 246 million euros in 2013 profit. ansa.it/web/notizie/ru… 5 days ago
  • Italy cannot afford the Concordat with the Catholic Church | Revolting Europe wp.me/p1bMfw-1ZB 6 days ago
  • RT @EuroParlPress: Press release: #Right2Water urges privatisation ban in first EU Citizens’ Initiative debate: europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-r… 1 week ago
  • RT @netizenrights: What are you hiding? The opacity of the EU-US trade talks corporateeurope.org/trade/2014/02/… via @corporateeurope #transparency #TTIP 1 week ago
  • RT @olivierhoedeman: .@EU_Commission heavily censored minutes of #TTIP meetings with industry #lobbyists; even lobbyists' names removed! ht… 1 week ago
  • RT @dropthedebt: Irish govt accepts Irish ppl 'robbed' over bank debts. But claims 'softly softly' approach cd get some of €64bn back http:… 1 week ago
  • Why deregulated labour market don't create jobs: case of Spain wp.me/p1bMfw-1Zu 1 week ago
Follow @tomgilltweets

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

DATA

Anti-social Europe in numbers

WAGES SLIDE

Key facts and figures on wages across the EU

Wealth Inequality in Europe

Get the key facts and figures

RADICAL VOICES

A different take on European issues

Italy’s Healthcare Crisis

Health services are ‘close to collapse’ in Rome, Turin and Naples after years of cuts and privatisation.

NO TO WATER PRIVATISATION

99% of the 167 000 Madrilenos who signed a petition rejected the sell off local water company

Filthy Rich

France's Bernard Arnault of the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) empire is worth $41 billion. Check out Europe's rich list

SANTA DRAGHI’S COMING

Private banks receive half-trillion-euro gift from ECB

POPULAR FIGHTBACK

Workers and citizens stand up for themselves

FLORENCE’S BUS LUMACA

Workers are on a go-slow over privatisation

Massive Spanish protest

Half a million take to the streets over labour market deregulation

FRENCH FACTORY OCCUPATION

Hundreds of workers occupied the factory of ArcelorMittal in Florange in the north of France

International Workers Day

International Workers Day 2012

RSS Watching Corporate Europe

  • What are you hiding? The opacity of the EU-US trade talks
  • Punishing the victims - a beginner's guide to the EU and the crisis
  • ALTER-EU asks MEP candidates to 'stand-up' against excessive lobbying by big business

RSS Hate Crimes in Europe

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Fight discrimination in Europe – Amnesty Int’l

  • Listen to Roma Rights
  • Russia: Legacy of Olympic Games tarnished by arrests

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

in Italy the home is a very dangerous place to be

LABOUR RIGHTS

Workers down tools over PM Monti's attack on labour rights

FORTRESS EUROPE

Concentration camps and a massive migrant marine cemetery

Archives

Subjects

Meta

EUROPE NEEDS A CITIZENS’ REVOLUTION

Read the statement by Lafontaine and Melenchon

PM Rajoy One Year On

Spaniards are not impressed

FRANCE

GERMANY

GREECE

ITALY

PORTUGAL

SPAIN

THE EURO

The Dossier