While the Working Committee of the Chamber of Deputies completed the process of the project to reduce the working day to 40 hours, President Sebastián Piñera went upagainst against the initiative, insisting on that the initiative is unconstitutional, and confirmed that it will resort to “all instruments for the respect of the Constitution.”
“All that has to do with public spending is an exclusive initiative of the President, parliamentarians cannot create it, imagine what the mess would be like. The PC’s deputys’ project is not constitutional. The President, the senators and deputies vow to enforce the laws, as President I will abide by my oath, I will abide by the Constitution and I hope that the House or Senate will not approve the bill,” the Representative said. Piñera added that “when Parliamentarians get out of the Constitution they are creating uncertainty, I am not going to stand by and I will resort to all the instruments that are within my power to respect the Constitution.”
The head of state emphasized that the Government “presented a long time ago and is part of our governance program, a project to reduce working hours because the most important thing about development and growth is to improve people’s quality of life. The project was done in a reasonable way, responsibly which will mean reducing the day from 45 to 41 hours, but with flexibility and graduality. Flexibility because it improves quality and avoids the impact on jobs and wages; that people can adapt their working times to other needs, but that companies can also organize theself.”
Controversial processing ends
The draft was completed this morning in the Committee on Labour of the Chamber of Deputies, where the remaining transitional article of yesterday’s heated session was dispatched, and which notes that the amendments under no circumstances may represent a decrease in the current pay of workers.
After the vote, Chile Vamos insisted that the project be passed first to the finance committee, on the grounds that the project would mean spending for Fisco, based on a report by the Directorate of Budgets (Dipres).
However, MEP Gael Yeomans (Social Convergence), chair of the Labour Committee, dismissed it outright and announced that “I am going to take the project for good because I have the power to do so.” With regard to indications, such as the one that established graduality for SMEs to adapt to the new legislation agreed with Christian Democracy, he said that these would be discussed in the debate in the room.
In the face of this, Deputy UDI Patricio Melero made a new reservation of constitutionality. “It was approved with forceps, without the minimum consensus, without having studied it in depth, without allowing the Finance Commission to see a bill that irrogates expense (…) It is a project that is wrong to come from, systematically violating the constitutional precepts that govern us in this matter,” he said.
For his part, Labour Minister Nicolas Monckeberg confirmed after the vote in the Committee on Labour, which will appeal to the Constitutional Court. “A very bad project is dispatched to the room (…) we have made the decision to appeal to the Constitutional Court,” he said.
“It is impossible that a makeshift project full of contradictions what it does is lower the day from 45 to a minimum of 37 hours, all Chileans know that if it is done abruptly it will affect the remuneration,” he added.
That is why he insisted that “since left-wing parliamentarians do not want to respect the basic rules, we have taken the decision to act responsibly and we will use the TC to have them determine that no parliamentarian can arrogate attributions that the Constitution does not give you.”
Review the statements of President Sebastián Piñera
