They will expose themselves by voting against what the public wants.
Three million part-time workers—73% women—would have seen automatic salary increases under the rejected law due to hourly rate adjustments. Construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and retail sectors with contracts exceeding 37.5 hours would have been most affected by the reduction.
- Three million part-time workers in Spain; 73% are women
- 12 million total wage earners would have benefited from the 37.5-hour week
- Eight in ten Catalans support the measure, according to polling
- PP, Vox, and Junts control enough votes to block the bill
Spain's Congress is set to reject a bill reducing maximum work hours to 37.5 weekly, disappointing 12 million workers. Women, service sector employees, and low-wage workers face the greatest losses from the law's failure.
Spain's Congress is about to reject a bill that would have cut the maximum work week to 37.5 hours—a defeat that will hit hardest those who can least afford it. The PP, Vox, and Junts control enough votes to kill the measure outright, and they have already signaled their opposition. For the government, which had staked its labor agenda on this law, the loss is significant. For the unions that negotiated the text, it is a setback. But for roughly 12 million wage earners across Spain, it means the work week stays as it is.
The damage, however, will not be distributed evenly. Women, workers in service industries, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture—and especially those earning the lowest wages—stand to lose the most. These groups often overlap. The business lobby, meanwhile, is quietly satisfied. They know that a legal mandate to shorten hours would have forced them to absorb higher labor costs, and they have no interest in that conversation.
Consider the three million Spaniards who work part-time. According to the latest data from Spain's National Statistics Institute, 73 percent of them are women. Under the rejected bill, as written by the Labor Ministry and the unions, these workers would have seen an automatic raise. The logic was straightforward: if the legal reference point shifts from 40 hours to 37.5 hours per week, the hourly wage rate must rise to match. A part-time worker earning the same total pay for fewer hours would effectively earn more per hour. Companies would have been forced to pay that difference. Building cleaners, food delivery drivers, school cafeteria monitors, tutoring instructors, hospitality staff—these are the kinds of jobs where part-time contracts dominate, and these are the kinds of workers who would have benefited most.
The ripple effects would have extended far beyond part-time workers. According to the Labor Ministry, about 12.6 percent of Spain's unionized workforce already works fewer than 37.5 hours per week, mostly under company-specific agreements. Everyone else would have seen their hours reduced to some degree. The impact would have been broad: construction, hospitality, retail, manufacturing, office work—all sectors with collective agreements above 37.5 hours. Though the picture is uneven by region. In Navarre and Gipuzkoa, hospitality workers already have 37.5-hour weeks locked in. In Barcelona and Girona, they work 40. Construction, manufacturing, and information technology sectors are where people routinely work more than 40 hours, whether as regular time or accumulated overtime. Education and some health services have fewer such long hours, though there the benefit would have come mainly through wage adjustments for part-timers rather than time off.
Yolanda Díaz, Spain's second vice president and leader of Sumar, had positioned the work-week reduction as her signature achievement for this legislative term. She has already indicated that Wednesday's expected defeat will not end her push. She plans to bring the bill back to Congress, hoping to pass it before the next general election. The political cost of this loss falls on her shoulders, though she is betting that the vote will damage her opponents more—that they will be exposed for voting against something the public overwhelmingly supports. Polling from the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió shows that eight in ten Catalans favor the measure. Even among voters for the PP, Vox, and Junts, more people support the law than oppose it. Díaz has been repeating a phrase: they will expose themselves. Whether that calculation holds depends on what happens next.
Citas Notables
The measure will expose those who vote against it, as public polling shows broad support across all voter groups.— Yolanda Díaz, Vice President and leader of Sumar
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a work-week reduction hurt women more than men, if it's supposed to help everyone?
Because women dominate part-time work in Spain—73 percent of the three million part-timers are women. The bill would have raised their hourly wage automatically when the legal standard dropped. Without it, they stay where they are.
So it's not about time off. It's about money.
For part-timers, yes. Full-time workers would have gotten both—fewer hours and the same pay. Part-timers would have gotten a raise per hour, which is different. But the effect is the same: more security, more income.
And the businesses don't want to pay that.
Right. They see it as a cost increase. If you have to pay the same total wage for fewer hours, or raise the hourly rate, your labor costs go up. That's why the business lobby is quiet and satisfied today.
What about construction and manufacturing? Those are male-dominated fields.
They work long hours—often over 40 a week. They would have seen real time reduction. But they're also unionized, with collective agreements. They have some protection. The most vulnerable are the people in hospitality, cleaning, delivery—lower wages, less union power, more likely to be women or migrants.
So Díaz is going to try again.
She says so. But she needs the votes, and she doesn't have them. The question is whether the public anger at this vote—and the polls show there is public support—will shift something in the next round.
Will it?
That depends on whether the parties that voted no face real consequences. Right now, they're betting the public will forget by election time. Díaz is betting they won't.