Gerardo Cuerva, president of Cepyme, the employers’ association for small and medium-sized enterprises, has particularly attacked the latest negotiation on the reduction of working hours, which is just “the latest example of how the government acts unilaterally, without evaluating its measures and to the detriment of business. The truth is that it is proving that there is little room for private enterprise in the face of a government that adopts communist theses. Negotiating under these conditions is very difficult, sometimes it even seems sterile, but we must continue to negotiate.
At their annual assembly, Spain’s small and medium-sized enterprises – 99.8% of the productive fabric, with nearly 11 million jobs – have decided to raise their voices with a resounding “enough is enough” in the face of government interference in business.
“We want to denounce the situation of attack that we entrepreneurs are suffering, because it is unfair, because it harms our legitimate rights protected in the Constitution and because it is objectively bad for our country” and called for “active defence” against the “harassment” of the Government and in “defence of freedom of enterprise” and against the “persecutory and incriminating” policy against entrepreneurship.
SMEs call for an end to control and over-regulation; respect for collective bargaining; non-intervention in wages; internal flexibility and non-interference in company resources; social charges and taxation that do not hinder competitiveness; and respect for social dialogue. “The over-regulation and excessive control that is being imposed on the company, the continued policy of increasing costs and bureaucratic, fiscal and social burdens is combined with a stigmatising discourse and a change of culture that is being sought on the figure of the entrepreneur based on the pursuit of profits, profitability and business success,” the document claims.
