The Government wants to implant the 'Austrian backpack' from 2020

The Government wants to implant the 'Austrian backpack' from 2020

The Agenda for Change includes a battery of 60 measures to be applied in two years, such as repealing the "most damaging" aspects of the labor reform or promoting the discontinuous fixed contract.

  The government has presented Friday a document with 60 social, economic and environmental measures to achieve an "inclusive and sustainable" model in the medium term. The so-called 'Agenda for Change' includes points as varied as the gradual implementation of the 'Austrian backpack', the creation of depopulation offices in rural districts or a compensation fund for environmental damage.

  With this plan they intend to begin to close some of the wounds that were opened in the wake of the economic crisis. The Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, stressed above all to end structural unemployment and the rise in wages so that the country continues to grow. He did not want to give concrete figures of investment of this battery of measures and referred only to the more than 350,000 million that had already commented the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, as an "approximate" data but that can not be calculated yet.

"Many are already contemplated in the draft Budgets and others will be in the accounts of future years," said the minister, who rejected the idea that this "road map" can be interpreted as an electoral program due to the difficulty of drawing forward the PGE and the possible call for elections.

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job
Austrian backpack
After many comings and goings, the Government of Sanchez recovers the idea put forward by the former Employment Minister, Fátima Báñez, to create in 2020 an individual capitalization fund following the model that Austria approved in 2003. This fund is nourished by the contributions of the employers of a part of the gross salary of each worker, so that if his dismissal arrives he does not receive compensation but takes the money from that "backpack" with him.

These accumulated amounts could also be made effective "in cases of geographical mobility , for the development of training activities or at the time of retirement" as a complement to their pension, the text says. The proposal will be addressed in the framework of "social dialogue" so that its approval has the greatest consensus, they explain.

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Fixed discontinuous contract
Another of the most important labor measures included in the program is to reduce the duality, cope with the rotation and the multiplication of contracts for the same job, by transferring the cost of the adjustment to the unemployment benefit system between this year and the one comes. The objective is to maintain flexibility by reducing the weight of labor contracting by reinforcing its control, "especially in relation to the irregular distribution of contracted work time," the document says.

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job
Repeal labor reform
The first point in terms of employment contemplated in the plan is "repealing the most harmful aspects" of the 2012 labor reform, as the Minister of Economy and Labor had already commented on several occasions. For this, they propose to work with social agents and parliamentary forces to reach consensus. It is expected to take place between this year and next.

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Inequality
Depopulation offices
Beyond the purely economic measures, one of the actions to reduce the inequality proposed by the Agenda for Change is the creation of depopulation offices in at least 20 rural districts that require urgent intervention. Its function is to accompany people or companies that want to settle in the area giving them all the contacts. It is a plan already planned in the PGE accounts for 2019.

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Ecological transition
Environmental fund
In the chapter on measures for green transition, the agenda talks about the creation of a fund to compensate for environmental damage that will be built up from the surcharges in insurance policies required to "the operators who carry out certain economic activities susceptible to cause damage to the environment ». The fund, which is already approved, will cover the damages for a time additional to the ordinary coverage with a limit of 30 years.

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Ecological transition
Autonomous car
They also include a sustainable mobility plan to promote the adoption of alternative vehicles and promote the installation of recharging points. In addition, the roadmap includes a pilot autonomous car program between this year and next. It will also carry out a review of the toll model of the high capacity road network to "guarantee sustainability and efficient use".