Feijóo courts Basque business community and proposes cutting salaries and benefits for workers on sick leave: "Absenteeism is a cancer we cannot afford"

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has taken his offensive against Pedro Sánchez to the field of Basque business leaders this Tuesday. The leader of the PP met with the Círculo de Empresarios Vascos in Bilbao with a message directed, though without explicitly naming it, at the PNV. “There is no ideological difference that allows this to be stretched for another year,” he stated before a key audience for the economic center-right of Euskadi.

The phrase well summarizes Génova’s strategy. Feijóo knows that the PNV will not give him a vote of no confidence and that his relations with the jeltzales remain full of mistrust. That is why the PP is now looking more at the moderate PNV voter than at its leadership. The objective is to open an electoral rift in Euskadi, a territory where the popular party has room for growth but where the shadow of Vox also complicates any approach to conservative nationalism.

Feijóo has tried to present himself as an alternative of order, business, and stability. He has spoken about housing, industry, taxation, energy, bureaucracy, and legal certainty. He has also promised an industrial competitiveness strategy with tax benefits for innovation, a review of tax increases, support for electro-intensive industry, and an energy policy “from technology” and not from “ideology.”

The leader of the PP has also made a direct nod to Basque self-government. He has defended the full compliance with the Constitution, including the First Additional Provision, the Statute of Gernika, and the foralidades of Euskadi and Navarra. The phrase had an obvious recipient on the right. “Those who say they love Spain very much, but are not willing to defend the State of Autonomies, do not love it very much,” he pointed out, in a barely disguised jab at the far-right Vox.

Absenteeism enters the campaign

The toughest part of his speech came with labor absenteeism. Feijóo defined it as “a cancer that we cannot afford” and assured that it represents a cost of more than 30,000 million euros per year. According to his presentation, every day there are 1.16 million people who do not go to their workplace, a figure he used to defend a labor reform with a strong business focus.

The president of the PP has promised to bring unions and employers to the table if he comes to power, but has made it clear that the negotiation would have limits. “If we reach an agreement, fantastic; and if we don’t reach an agreement, well, what can we do?” he said. He has also questioned that agreements allow earning the same when working as when not attending the workplace.

This approach opens a delicate door. Feijóo has mixed sick leave, permits, and absences under the umbrella of absenteeism, without separating fraud, illness, mental health, care, or problems derived from healthcare saturation. Unions have been warning for months that turning sick leave into generalized suspicion punishes the sick worker and shifts the focus from issues such as waiting lists, occupational prevention, or the deterioration of mental health after the pandemic.

The PP, on the other hand, has decided to make this debate an economic banner. Feijóo links it to productivity, business costs, and the sustainability of Social Security. Employers have also been pushing to review the system, especially due to the cost of short-term sick leave and the role of mutual insurance companies. The discussion will no longer be just labor-related, it will also be electoral.

Pressure on the PNV and attack on Sánchez

Feijóo took advantage of the event to once again criticize the Government for the judicial cases surrounding the PSOE and Sánchez's inner circle. He spoke of a “governmental decadence” and accused the Executive of jumping “from plot to plot, from order to order or from crime to crime”. His message to the PNV was clear without naming it. Whoever supports Sánchez also supports that wear and tear.

The popular leader also brought to Bilbao the controversy over Begoña Gómez and the NATO summit in Ankara. He has warned of an “enormous reputational cost” for Spain due to the absence of the president's wife, after Juan Carlos Peinado's substitute judge allowed her to travel to London but vetoed her travel to Turkey by keeping her passport withdrawn.

The visit is completed with the PP's attempt to gain ground in Euskadi from an economic agenda recognizable to the business community. Feijóo also visited Petronor and learned about decarbonization projects linked to synthetic fuels, CO2 capture, waste valorization, and renewable hydrogen. Génova wants to showcase an industrial project in a territory where the economy weighs as much as political identity.

The PNV already asked Sánchez to call elections if he fails to approve the Budgets, but has not taken any step to hand over the Government to the PP. Feijóo has decided to surround that door through the electorate. This Tuesday he did so before Basque businessmen, with absenteeism turned into a labor warning.