Salazar warns that reducing the working day without social dialogue could destroy employment in the Canary Islands

The president of the Lanzarote Business Confederation (CEL), Beatriz Salazar, has asked the Spanish Government and unions to reconsider establishing a social dialogue to consider the reduction of working hours based on the characteristics of each sector and territory "because, otherwise, job destruction may occur on the island and in the Canary Islands."

Salazar assured this Monday in statements collected in a statement that this decrease "must address the particularities of each of the branches of activity" when recalling that more than 95% of the companies in the archipelago are self-employed, SMEs and micro-enterprises, with a small number of workers.

"Therefore, a study and analysis of the economic and territorial context is necessary, since this measure will especially impact the hospitality, commerce and tourism sector," she said.

However, she stressed the importance of formulating support measures to avoid generating "more losses than benefits" in Canary Islands companies, taking into account that "there are already other factors that generate additional costs on our companies, derived from their condition of outermost region and fragmentation of the territory," such as transport, the import of raw materials, the rise in electricity and rents, or the difficulty in finding qualified personnel.

In this line, Salazar has argued that the lack of suitable professional profiles and absenteeism, which is around 20%, are two of the factors that are making the Canary Islands lag behind in European productivity.

"Specifically, absenteeism levels have doubled compared to 2019," said the president of the CEL, for whom "the reduction of the working day from 40 to 37.5 hours per week will force some of the small Canary Islands companies to close, as they will have great difficulties in being able to assume the increase in operating costs."

"In the best of scenarios, it will be the self-employed who have to assume the provision of services of the affected companies; in the worst, there will be business closures and job destruction in small and medium-sized companies," she predicted.