Working better is guaranteeing labor rights
Economic prospects are still favorable. Despite the setback of the last EPA, with a sudden and high increase in unemployment that returns us to the leadership in this scourge in the developed world, Catalonia continues to grow, and above its surroundings. But tailwinds are no guarantee of progress. The risk is having consumed very good years with too much complacency and not having done our homework well enough. Perhaps because some debates are too uncomfortable, but sooner or later we will have to face them: working or not working, rights or duties, higher wages or productivity, technology or employment.
Do you work or are you unemployed? Unemployment continues to be a structural anomaly that we cannot normalize. It is difficult to explain to our employers who are struggling to fill vacancies that, at the same time, we maintain improper unemployment levels. Not everything is explained by a lack of real opportunities. Deficient guidance, training poorly connected to real needs, lack of accreditation of skills, and a certain distance of people from the labor market weigh heavily.
Unemployment should be a contingent event, a vital incident from which to emerge with public support in the shortest possible time. Benefits are a conquest of social justice, but they make sense if they are accompanied by an effective commitment to public policies and, above all, to people's employability: becoming active, training, and taking advantage of opportunities. We can never accept chronic unemployment as an option.
Rights or duties? For too long we have contrasted labor rights and labor market efficiency. As if defending people's rights were incompatible with improving productivity, reducing the incidence of absences, filling vacancies, or better connecting companies and talent. It is a false dichotomy. Labor rights are consolidated when the labor market functions better. An inefficient market does not protect more: it expels opportunities, perpetuates inequalities, and weakens the ability to distribute prosperity.
Work is a space of rights and duties. It is not a perfect balance, but it is recognizable. When the perception is that a certain right not to work is being gestated, even if it is exaggerated, it is advisable to listen to the background noise. Because behind it there are objective data and diagnoses; insufficient productivity, poorly managed absenteeism, rising costs, and difficulty in organizing work better.
And you, how much do you want to earn? There will be no higher salaries without more productivity and improvements in the efficiency of the labor market. There will be no more stability without more competitive companies. And there will be no effective rights if employment policies do not accompany real transitions. Work is the best social policy when it allows us to progress, reconcile, add value, and build life projects. But this requires us to put it at the center of wealth redistribution and understand that companies, especially SMEs, are where many opportunities become possible.
Improving their size, improving companies' ability to grow and generate wealth is synonymous with strength in the productive fabric and, at the same time, with improved salaries. Those countries with better salaries have companies with a high contribution of gross value added per person, and everyone benefits.
What will we work on? Employment is already immersed in simultaneous transitions: digital and technological, green and circular, social and demographic, geoeconomic and global uncertainty, and finally, that of new work drawn by the war for talent and the orchestration of technology in workplaces. Digitalization is already an infrastructure for competitiveness, the green transition demands new skills and ubiquity; aging generates new demand and a talent deficit; diplomatic histrionics necessitate resilience and proximity, and work will be more hybrid, fluid, and demanding in technical and relational skills.
Artificial intelligence deserves its own section. AI and robotics will produce labor shifts faster than other innovations. Some jobs will disappear, many will be transformed, and others will be born from the combination of human and digital skills. The challenge is not to deny it or dramatize it, but to govern it. The battle for work as the best social policy is not lost; it is now truly beginning.
And now, what do we do? We must move from diagnosis to action. For too long, we have continued to avoid debates, as if we could live off the income of growth, without focusing on what and how we will live in the future. Employment policies must be measured by insertion, permanence, salary, and skills adequacy, not just by administrative activity. Lifelong learning must be a national habit. Labor market guidance must be connected with SMEs and real vacancies. Collective bargaining must regulate (also) flexibility, occupational health, and productivity. And companies must do their homework: technology, processes, training, talent retention, and sense of work. And perhaps we must call for our educational system, not just vocational training, to synchronize with this.
We are in a favorable, but not guaranteed, moment. Catalonia can continue to grow, but the challenge is to grow better: with more productivity, good jobs, adaptation, and effective social justice. If we do our homework, we can be an economy that not only creates employment, but also advances work. The frontier to conquer is not to work more to compensate for inefficiencies, but to work better to expand opportunities and guarantee rights. As normal countries do.
