The labor reform has once again put labor law at the center of the debate. However, we observe that the main reflections are focused on improving working conditions for workers, leaving, perhaps, the implications of collective law in the background. In relation to this, it seems that the perspective on the importance of labor relations in the construction of our political community has been lost: the debates for the post-labor left no longer revolve solely around the rights of workers, but rather the widening of the concept of well-being has led us to include other variables, such as gender issues or rights associated with culture.

This is undoubtedly good news because it means that the degree of improvement in our social status is considerable if we compare it with its early stages. However, we must always bear in mind that work is much more than production; That is why it is the substrate of ideologies such as socialism and is one of the bases of our current social contract.

The fact that work was decisive in the ideological constructions of more than a century ago resulted in the fact that in countries like Spain some rights associated with work activity were protected in the Constitution. As an example, the right to strike or collective bargaining. This is so because, as I indicated previously, our political community is sustained by the pact between capital and labor; For this reason, it is essential that social dialogue and negotiation form the backbone of our labor relations: only in this way can we guarantee a balanced coexistence that tends to correct inequality in economic and power terms. Well, the latest labor reform served to alter these assumptions indirectly and gradually.

How to Document Pulses https://t.co /sTtjOB6BO9

— Ementes Technologies Sun Jun 28 09:10:13 +0000 2020

The regulatory changes that I describe supposed the establishment of a state of vulnerability for the working classes that made it difficult for them to have a negotiating position with real influence. Negotiating equality between the parties is a condition of possibility; A single mother who is compelled by the urgent need to pay the rent and support her children is not a symmetrical interlocutor with respect to the owner of a company or a human resources executive.

A great example of what I try to expose is the promotion of temporality. If workers cannot consolidate their jobs, are easily fired or are waiting to sign their next contract to keep their jobs, it is practically impossible to form works councils with bargaining power. When it becomes structural, as it happens in Spain, it directly affects our democracy.

Another component that weakens the ability of the working classes to exercise power is the devaluation of collective agreements in the face of contracting with the company. If the working conditions depend fundamentally on the individual relationship of the worker with his company, the balance becomes unbalanced, leaving the worker in the position of accepting anything in order to keep his job. As a corollary and consequence of this vulnerability, the phenomenon of the working poor occurs, which contributes to consolidating inequality. It is important to remember that, despite the neoliberal mantras, it has not yet been proven that an increase in the interprofessional minimum wage destroys employment and, on the contrary, it serves to correct the distribution of wealth that, let us remember, in our country is subordinate to the general interest.

In short, the labor reform proposed by the Government of Spain and which comes to correct many of these deficits will be good for individual workers, however, we must pay special attention to collective labor rights because they mark, without doubt, the architecture of all our freedoms.