companies Archives - Store of Sport

The disagreement between employers and the Government forces companies to advance orders before the strike of carriers

The companies are working on contingency plans to advance the reception of merchandise before December 20.

The experts consulted by this means say that if a week after the the carriers’ strike has not reached an agreement it is already difficultstop. Although it is not impossible because employers and the Government will meet again after closing yesterday’s meeting with little progress. The problem is that there is no agreement and there is less than a week left for December 20 and the country’s companies are preparing for a three-day strike.

Specifically, some transport companies, this week they have decided to advance orders and change truckers’ shiftsincluding weekend deliveries, according to industry sources.

Changes motivated at the request of client companies (shippers) that have also increased production in their factories to avoid shortages as much as possible in those three days. In fact, some large factories value stopping their production during strike daysas this medium has learned.

Keep in mind that these are complicated dates: December 20, 21 and 22. in the middle of christmas. “The Christmas campaign is one of the key consumption moments of the year, so the strike by the employers of carriers comes in a critical week,” say sources from the Association of Manufacturers and Distributors (Aecoc).

From the moment it was announced, they assure that the companies began to work on contingency plans to advance the reception of merchandise -except in the case of fresh products- and thus minimize the possible impact of the strike, should it finally take place.

Carriers

However, with each passing day the costs and complications intensify and, for this reason, from Aecoc they emphasize the need to maintain dialogue.

“After a very complicated period in which the sector, thanks to the efforts of all professionals in the logistics chain, has managed to guarantee the supply of all kinds of products to thousands of homes, now society is not going to understand that the supply chain is stop voluntarily and prevent some of the star products from reaching homes on such special days”.

Collapse in three days

The same experts who believe that there will be a strike also say that the choice of three days was not random, but it has a reason for being: the collapse in the middle of Christmas. There are 72 hours in which there is a break in the logistics chain that affects all sectors of the economy, although some are more damaged, such as food.

Hence, historically, this type of approach is carried out in transport strikes, sources in the sector explain. For example, during the last truckers’ strike, which took place between June 9 and 15, 2008, Mercamadrid announced that as of June 12 the effects of the shortage would begin to be felt.

But a day before, when those three days were up, the lack of food in small and large stores was already confirmed. The shortage was such that many merchants decided to transport the purchased merchandise in their own vehicles.

That in three days. But what if there were more? This option is open because the unions threaten to call new strikes if the Ministry of Transport and the big companies do not attend to their demands. We are talking about different strikes and a threat that does nothing more than exemplify the division within the sector itself.

The first notice is in Murcia. CCOO, together with UGT and USOhas already summoned a strike in the region between December 23 and January 2 due to the lack of agreement in the negotiations of the new collective agreement. We are talking about a strike that would start after the employers’ strike if the government does not finally manage to stop it. The unions warn that it may even be transferred to other communities.

If consummated, the impact on the Spanish economy would be devastating. The collapse and shortages – not only of food – would be much greater. This would add to the current supply crisis and delivery delays, creating a serious problem. A problem for which the countdown has already begun to run.

Opinion
companies, taxes, they

18Mar

Díaz and the looting of the Government with wages

“Don’t wanna be your slave twenty-four hours a day.” Mick jagger.

Yolanda Diaz He has never created a company in his life, nor paid a payroll out of his pocket, but he happens to know exactly how much companies should charge and pay.

Costs skyrocketing? They demand that companies not raise prices and that they lose… but that they pay more taxes.

Do taxes shoot up work? They require you to pay more salaries even if they keep almost 35% of what you earn.

And on top of that, they blame you for paying few taxes.

For socialism, everyone has a margin except them.

If it’s a wage issue, why don’t you lower taxes on work? A salary of 1,000 euros is more than 1,800 gross.

If it’s a wage issue, why don’t you lower taxes on work?

Spain was the European country in which the tax pressure grew the most during the pandemic. How could this have happened with a million fewer people listed and 100,000 fewer listed companies? Exploding what’s left. The tax hack has been triggered in addition to charging taxes on the misnamed “aid”.

This is especially serious because tax collection has skyrocketed even though the tax base has worsened, that is, we have been suffocated with taxes that we have overcome the crisis while the government not only maintained, but increased, all political spending, duplicities and unnecessary.

Spain was also the European country with the highest deficit despite squeezing captive taxpayers like never before. The weight of spending on GDP increased 10 points in the midst of the pandemic, and not a tiny part of that increase was aid to executed companies.

Spain also closed 2020 with the lower level of aid to companies and the self-employedexecuted Really. Let’s not forget that announcements were made –such as the misnamed direct aid- that were never fulfilled. And let’s not forget that the ERTE is not an aid from the state to the companies but from the companies to the state, since it is much cheaper for the public coffers to have a person in an ERTE than an unemployed person.

The latest AIReF forecasts show a rebound of just 2.6% in the first nine months of 2021less than half of what the government expects for its fake budgets.

We already warned last week that the macro table for growth, oil prices and inflation were laughable, a completely invalid macro table and science fiction revenues that, despite everything, leave a structural deficit – the one generated whether we grow or not – that it will be the highest in the European Union in 2023 on your own estimates.

The fiscal and inflationary clamp to companies and citizens impoverishes everyone and it is intolerable.

The companies face a rise in the prices of their inputs –increase in costs- that exceeds 16%. For companies, energy has risen more than 31%, non-durable consumer goods 26% and average costs between 15 and 20%. A ruin in a country of SMEs and for the manufacturing sector that manufactures components.

Additionally, with the rise in the minimum wage, the cost of hiring and the minimum contribution bases have increased. For an average company, 66% of their costs – wages and energy – have ballooned far beyond what they can pass on to their customers. And Yolanda Díaz arrives and tells them in a soft voice to get annoyed and pay more salaries so that she steals even more in indirect and direct taxes.

The ‘hachazo’ to the self-employed is even more bloody because they have the shamelessness to say that nobody cares to pay 200 euros more a year. Tell it to the hundreds of thousands of self-employed who cannot make ends meet, to whom all taxes have been raised and on top of that the penalties for delay have been maintained, a real robbery.

The interventionist government plunders via tax and with the inflationary tax and then, in a mellifluous voice, he tells you that he is going to help you with your own money and that companies pay more and sell below the increase in costs.

Meanwhile, they continue to fatten the extractive and confiscatory machinery.

And they have the shamelessness to ask for “empathy”.

Opinion
companies, construction, rise

10Mar

Towards the (in)digestion of European funds

The president of Construction warns of the consequences of the rise in raw materials and lack of workers and asks to repeal the Deindexation Law.

If the arrival and subsequent allocation of European funds could be compared to a banquet, there are already clear symptoms of a future embarrassment, of a more than possible digestion cut. It is not that we are going to choke on the community aid on which the recovery of Spain depends, but that the delay in its management and execution is causing bottlenecks in sectors such as construction, where concern is already rampant .

But the embarrassment cannot come only from the unbalanced rates of digestion of funds. Because this delay is just one of the threats currently facing construction: a sector that lacks 700,000 workers and that is already paying the bill for the exorbitant rise in raw materials.

Specifically, the rise in prices has triggered the cost of works by 22.2% and has forced four out of ten companies to cancel or stop them, in addition to causing shortages in more than 75% of companies.

The rise in prices has triggered the cost of works by 22.2% and has forced four out of 10 companies to cancel or stop them

In this context, the rise in raw materials could end up alarmingly slowing down the pace of recovery. Especially considering that construction will channel nearly 7 out of every 10 euros from Europe, which represents around 10% of GDP and will generate a quarter of all jobs related to the arrival of “European manna”.

Hence, our insistence on the importance of repeal the Deindexation Law and to establish a system to economically rebalance the contracts, so that both the viability of the projects and the stability of the contracts -new and in progress- can be guaranteed.

However, CNC has worked on various models that make it easier for construction companies to make claims against the Administration or the project promoter. In this way, any company affected by the unusual increase in the price of raw materials may request from the contracting party an extension of the term, the modification of the contract or compensation for breach of the contractual economic balance.

The update of the macroeconomic table already set off the alarms, since it included a cut in growth projections for our sector, practically reducing it by half -specifically, from 6.1% to 3%-. Meanwhile, expectations for 2022 contemplate an advance of more than 10%, when figures from sources such as Euroconstruct place it at levels close to 6%.

Thus, fearing that during the last four months the execution of the funds will continue at a slow pace and that throughout the next year the accelerator will have to be fully stepped on, the Administration has to act with agility before bidding for projects. An agility that makes more sense if possible in view of the fact that the arrival of new aid will depend on the achievement of certain objectives and that the community investment must be executed, at the latest, in 2026.

Hopefully it is true that the tenders linked to the Recovery Plan will accelerate in the coming weeks and months. Otherwise, the delay in the implementation of European funds could turn into wet paper any spreadsheet on which hopes are now placed.

In short, it is urgent that we prepare ourselves to digest European funds, which represent a unique opportunity to transform and modernize our country.

And to prepare ourselves in a timely manner, we need more workers; establish an automatic rebalancing system that makes it possible to deal with this extra cost and, therefore, takes into account changes subsequent to the presentation of offers, both upwards and downwards, seeking to provide stability to the contract; and greater agility in bureaucratic procedures so that the execution of aid allows construction to generate a tractor effect that accelerates the economic recovery of Spain.

Because, as in life itself, in the face of digestion cuts, prevention is better than cure. It will not be that we are not warning him.

*** Pedro Fernández Alén is president of Construction (CNC).

Opinion
companies, they, would

9Feb

The PNV lowers the ‘decree’ against the electric companies to a ‘decree’

The Government will moderate the application of the ‘energy decree’. They will stop attacking the “electric companies” for their “extraordinary profits” derived from the rise in the price of energy, if they meet certain requirements. If they show that they are “good guys” and make their supply contracts reasonable for consumers.

The first thing is to clarify that are not extraordinary profits per se. Accounting, that figure responds to those achieved by a company in operations outside the object of its business. For example, if a food or energy distributor makes a profit by selling a building it owns, that profit shows up in its income statement as “extraordinary profits.” What is qualified as extraordinary profits of the electric companies are not such. They are profits derived from the current operations of these companies. Greater than in other circumstances, but ordinary.

So in the event that the Government wanted to expropriate these “ordinary benefits” it would have to calculate them. Not as extraordinary, but as supplementary ordinary and it would not be clear what they are. Something that would lead to litigation, which could end up in court. Technically the discussion is complex. Better not get into trouble because as the legal saying goes: A bad settlement is better than a good lawsuit. The quick thing would be to reach an agreement between the Treasury and the electric companies. What would probably be a fact of image and propaganda rather than something significant.

In addition, the Government does not say How will you check the “reasonableness” of the contracts? to consider that the electric companies have behaved properly. Absence that allows us to suspect that what the Government has said to the electricity companies is that they are not going to demand what the Decree says.

It will be enough for the energy companies to make some gesture for the Decree to enter a dead end in relation to those improperly called “extraordinary benefits”. That would also be an agreement that would avoid lawsuits against the Government.

In this way, the Government and electricity companies mutually benefit. The Executive with the image that seems to defend consumers. The electricity companies maintaining the benefits that allow them to remunerate their shareholders; both because of the dividends that they are going to be able to distribute, and because of the increase in the stock market price of their shares, because investors see the ghost of the controlling government disappear.

It is clear that United We Can is up to date to demonstrate that it is “the guarantor” in the Government of the real left. So it would not be strange for him to raise his voice in a few weeks when he sees that nor does it lower the electricity bill substantially, nor does the Government mess with the electric companies.

Neither Yolanda Díaz nor Alberto Garzón will be able to shout much. Why? Because this Sánchez-Díaz Government (which tilts Díaz-Sanchez) needs the 2020 Budgets to be approved and this is where the PNV comes into play with its deputies in Congress.

This Sánchez-Díaz Government (which tilts Díaz-Sanchez) needs the 2020 Budgets to be approved and this is where the PNV comes into play

It is the PNV that is going to reduce the decree of the electric companies to a decree. The reader will wonder what benefit Basque nationalism derives from doing this?

It cannot be affirmed that there is a direct relationship in this. However, there is a coincidence that if it were perverse it could be highlighted. The fiscal headquarters of the most important electric company, Iberdrola is in Bilbao. Therefore, it pays taxes to the Provincial Treasury of Vizcaya. One of the three Haciendas that feed the Budget of the Basque Country.

The PNV, which governs in coalition with the PSE, is interested in Iberdrola continuing to be listed in Vizcaya; given the precedent of the companies in Catalonia that left. Iberdrola, provided that the parliamentary situation is the current one, is interested in having its fiscal headquarters in Bilbao; to have a party like the PNV as an interlocutor, which in addition to being nationalist is in favor of the free market, with the nuances that correspond to its Christian Democrat component. A PNV that has the key to many parliamentary issues by completing the majorities.

So PNV and Iberdrola support each other financially and politically. That’s why what seemed like an ‘Electric Decree’ is going to remain a ‘little decree’ (in lowercase). It will be one of the conditions for the PNV to vote on the 2022 Budgets that the Government so badly needs.

*** JR Pin is a professor at IESE.