Spanish unions push for 37.5-hour week

The leaders of Spain’s two largest union confederations, Unai Sordo for CCOO and Pepe Álvarez for the UGT, have promised that they will increase their efforts to ensure that legislation introducing a 37.5-hour week is passed by the end of the year.

Speaking after a meeting with the labour minister at the start of September, Sordo said: “We have been negotiating over recent months, we continued talking over the whole of the summer and in these months of autumn, we have to decide definitely on a reduction in working time at least to 37-and-a-half hours a week”.

The unions want a legal reduction in working time and Álvarez said that this would be the “great battle” for the autumn session of parliament.