The second vice president and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, , is visiting California (United States), studying the challenges posed by artificial intelligence and digital transformation in jobs. He is holding meetings with democratic leaders, unions and worker groups to understand the panorama in depth in a territory that, if it were a country, would be the fourth largest economy in the world.
Especially striking has been his charge against the labor and business organization model of , as well as against the large US technology companies that do not pay taxes in Spain. “What I am telling Amazon is that you cannot work 120 hours a week. What I am telling Amazon is that it cannot have biometric control systems whose data is used against workers,” he denounced, for example, at the University of California, where he also recalled that the Spanish Executive also works on firms like Uber, since its workers “do not have insurance policies” and run risks.
In his agenda these days, Díaz has also added, this past morning, in which he has once again insisted on these ideas. He says he finds “parallels” between what happens in large American firms and in our country. “Big technology companies use a labor policy based on not having labor rights and exploiting workers. For example, Amazon makes its workers extend their working hours between 90 and 120 hours a week and without limits on labor and human rights. My country is the first country in the world right now that has regulated this matter,” he recalls.
When asked by journalist Juan Carlos López what Spain is doing differently, both in terms of employment and purely economic matters, to the point of being the large advanced economy that is growing the most for the second consecutive year (), Díaz has defended that “Spain is the first economy today in the OECD, which is growing at 3.2%, and it does so fundamentally from the world of work”, which is its subject.
“We have made public policies in the Ministry of Labor, a great labor reform, which has given stability in employment and which means that today in our country, for the first time, and we are also the EU country that generates employment and also provides quality employment,” he has exposed to a public little familiar with what in Spain has been a good part of this legislature. Galician politics adds, to these policies, another key that makes things different: “the systematic increase in the interprofessional minimum wage.”
“In short, and here we do have parallels with the state of California, raising the minimum wage, that is, improving the wages of working people, and providing job security also improves the economy and therefore also improves internal demand. It is the best public policy that we can deploy,” he argues.
Lessons about what is and what is not
On his journey, he says he draws clear lessons on the do’s and don’ts of workplace matters. “The first, that labor rights can be lost quickly,” as researchers at the University of Berkeley have told him, for example, not only due to new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, but also due to “the deregulation process that the “want.” A vision that, he denounces, he not only wants to implement in the United States, but “in the entire world.”
He continues with the fear that the unions have transmitted to him “due to the reprisals that the new Administration is practicing on migrants, LGTBIQ+ people or, simply, in the world of work and racialized people.” Therefore, “the learning is that we have to share a global agenda, Trump and many international leaders are carrying an agenda that is against workers and against unions,” he insists, and that is why he prefers that progressive forces share an agenda and commitment “of a global nature” to “defend the dignity of working people and defend the rights of women, racialized people, migrants and LGTBIQ+ people.”
But the vice president’s depth charge has come when she has been consulted about the , which Trump has launched to expel them in an unprecedented number. Can Spain be a destination for all these desperate people? Díaz has defended that ours “is a country based on diversity, that knows emigration well, that knows immigration well and, therefore, practices immigration policies based on human rights and dignity.” For this reason, “Spain does not share the policy that is being deployed from the US and if you allow me, with humility, I join the Pope’s recent words about the raid campaigns that the North American administration has against migrants,” he indicated. , North American and Peruvian, has called for a “deep reflection” on how migrants are treated in their native country. Last week, he recalled that Christians will be judged by “how they welcomed the foreigner,” in reference to the ICE raids.
“There is terror about the mass expulsion by the Trump Administration, and this is precisely what is not decent and dignified in the 21st century”
“Countries are based precisely on diversity and everything, above all, focuses on the fact that we are human beings, that we deserve dignity, opportunities,” the head of Labor insists on CNN. “Above all, what we need is in the world,” he elaborates. Therefore, he says, “of course Spain makes inclusion and the banner of human rights one of its public policies, but it is also true that I have to take advantage of this interview to point out that we do not share at all the terror that the North American administration is causing in this matter,” he denounced. “Notice that these days, with all the meetings I have had, with many sectors, including cultural ones, there is terror about the mass expulsion by the Trump Administration, and this is precisely what is not decent and dignified in the 21st century,” he concludes.
Okay, they are not three facts, they are a noun and two adjectives, more than three facts, but Trump will not be amused if he hears them… there is no doubt about that.
