What wonderful news: Coalición Canaria and the Partido Popular want to issue a decree to sanction the unemployed who reject a job or training. Because, of course, in their parallel universe, if you're unemployed it's because you don't feel like working. Not because the salaries are miserable or the contracts last less than a candy at the school gates.
In short, CC and PP have decided to resurrect the old Vagrancy Law, but with a "modern" touch and a lot of institutional marketing. They'll call it something like "Plan Actívate Canarias," which sounds nicer than saying "either you work for peanuts or we'll take away your benefits."
The same people who have been presiding over institutions for decades, signing precarious contracts, outsourcing services, and making structural unemployment a common sight, are now outraged that there are those who don't accept any shoddy job. How dare they, right?
Because if the job is 50 km away, poorly paid, and without social security, it doesn't matter: CC and PP want you to say yes, smile, and thank them. To be poor, but obedient.
And of course, they sell it as "a measure to reduce absenteeism." Yes, of course. Because people get up every morning thinking "how I enjoy calling in sick for fun and living off thin air."
What in Europe is called economic coercion, here they dress up as "incentive to employment." But be careful, the European Court of Human Rights has already stated that imposing work under threat of sanction can be considered forced labor. And that, dear friends, is illegal.
Meanwhile, the real "vagrants and scoundrels" — those in ties, with allowances and official cars — will continue to give us lessons on effort from their air-conditioned offices.
In summary: the problem isn't that people don't want to work. The problem is that CC and PP want us to work without dignity, and on top of that, thank them for it.
