Yolanda Díaz asks Congress to support the unemployment benefit reform above political "acronyms"

He criticizes the PP's labor policies in past legislatures and does not talk about the cuts that Podemos denounces

MADRID, 10 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, has asked the Plenary Session of Congress to support the decree approving the unemployment benefit reform above interests and political "acronyms."

In her intervention to defend this decree, which could fail due to the vote against the opposition and two of the Government's partners (Junts and Podemos), Yolanda Díaz has made a general request for the parliamentary groups to put the interests of the country first. and from the "most humble" people to their own.

"We are talking about people's lives," Díaz added in the extraordinary plenary session this Wednesday, which is being held in the Senate. The vice president, in this context, recalled that the reform in general terms will mean increasing the aforementioned subsidy from 480 to 570 euros per month for people who have exhausted contributory benefits.

But Díaz has also had time to criticize the policies undertaken by different PP governments. Specifically, the leader of Sumar has stressed that the different reforms to unemployment benefits undertaken by 'popular' governments have been aimed at tightening access and reducing social protection at the contributory level.

Specifically, he recalled that under the administration of Mariano Rajoy, social protection for unemployment was modified to make access to it more difficult, going so far as to "cut social protection in our country by 25 points precisely when the most people needed it."

"The PP made a reform that openly violated the spirit and constitutional mandate in its article 41," said Díaz, who believes that this has been resolved with the latest labor reform and the 2023 General Budgets, so that "today the unemployed Spaniards receive 100 euros more".

In her speech, Yolanda Díaz also stressed that unemployment benefits are not part of employment policies, but rather a constitutional right included in article 41 of the Magna Carta.

An article that Díaz has cited to remind the PP, which he has accused of "imposed constitutionalism", that the public powers will maintain a public Social Security regime for all citizens that guarantees sufficient social assistance and benefits in situations of need, especially , in case of unemployment. Supplementary assistance and benefits shall be optional.

In this sense, it has influenced the obligation that the State has to maintain adequate levels of protection and minimum benefits for citizens. And here, says Díaz, the unemployment benefit is an "essential instrument" to fight against poverty and inequality, and that is why the vice president believes that "not only must it be maintained, but it must be gradually improved."

He has also denounced that unemployment protection continues to be "in the target of liberal positions" with some "topics" that blame the unemployment problem on unemployed people.

Among these topics, he has mentioned the idea that unemployment benefits and subsidies discourage the search for employment, that unemployed people have serious employability problems and that the State spends too much.

"These clichés, ladies and gentlemen, consist, ultimately, of one thing only, blaming the problem of unemployment," Díaz stressed, to explain that unemployment is a social problem "that derives from the social and productive structure of our contemporary society." .