Lorenzo Amor (ATA) will defend extending unemployment benefits to the self-employed for those over 52 years of age

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, 4 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The president of the Association of Self-Employed Workers (ATA) and vice president of the CEOE, Lorenzo Amor, has advanced that Cepyme and ATA will defend that the unemployment benefit reform includes the extension to those over 52 years of age for the self-employed.

In an interview on Radio Galega collected by Europa Press, Amor regretted that this issue was brought to Congress "without negotiation" and that it was subsequently "defeated in parliament." "Now we are told that they want to negotiate. This is a secondary social dialogue," he reproached.

Questioned by the PNV's request that the regional agreement prevail, Lorenzo Amor has expressed the opinion that it is "a disloyalty to social dialogue." "When an agreement is reached, it is reached so that it lasts over time," he said, before recalling that the Executive "agreed with the PNV on something that had already been rejected in the labor reform."

"Social dialogue cannot be 'when I am interested I reach an agreement and when I do not reach an agreement on the other hand'. Sometimes maintaining a Government leads to betraying important agreements for this country," he criticized.

Regarding the approval this Tuesday of the interprofessional minimum wage, the president of ATA has acknowledged that it is "the decision that the Government has made", but that "sadly" many self-employed workers and many small businesses "are going to see how they will have to apply this increase decree", while the administrations "will continue without paying the self-employed and the companies that work with them the updates they have had of more than 50% of their salaries".

"It is very easy to decide by decree that employers and the self-employed raise workers' salaries, but it costs a lot of work for the administration when it acts as a company," he explained.

Furthermore, Lorenzo Amor has said he agrees with the lowest salaries rising. He has pointed out that this year when the increase in the SMI was proposed, they put on the table "an increase of 3 or 4%", but also that business owners and self-employed workers with the lowest income "would be compensated with these increases." . "It is very easy to say that the salary must be raised and the administration is not willing to increase the benefits that the administrations pay to these businessmen," he stated.

In relation to the reduction of the working day, Lorenzo Amor recalled that in collective bargaining a year ago with the unions "there was already a recommendation urging that collective bargaining tables work for this, taking into account "accounts for the calculation of annual hours worked".

He has argued this issue because "the reduction of working hours in certain months, in certain territories or in certain sectors is not the same." "The bipartite negotiation, with the unions, is working; when we reach a tripartite one we see that politics is above the interests for productivity and improvement of what the business fabric is," he said.

On the other hand, the president of ATA has indicated that he sees "fatigue" in the labor market, in which there was "a growth that was around 4%" and that ends "with a growth of 2.6%."

For Amor, there is "distrust" in the business community when "populist messages are launched." "Everyone likes to work less and earn more, the problem is that productivity in our country is as it is; we generate legal uncertainty, labor costs increase, being an entrepreneur, being self-employed is becoming more and more difficult and with these things It is very difficult to create jobs and maintain them," he justified.

Likewise, he predicted that inflation "will continue to be high", although he hopes it will moderate. However, he has stated that average inflation this year will be around "2.5% and 3%."

In the framework of this interview, Lorenzo Amor has also shown his support for the primary sector and has regretted that the latest agreements at the European level "damage the Spanish countryside" and labor policies in Spain "are also punishing the countryside."

In this sense, he pointed out that the increase in the SMI "one of the sectors that most affects is the countryside." "The farmers themselves are asking for a modification to be developed in social contributions for contracts in the countryside. They have looked the other way and nothing has been done," she said.

"I think that Europe has to change the chip. While in Asia they manufacture and in the United States they innovate, here they do not stop regulating and that is bad for productivity and for many sectors," he concluded.