Lean cows have arrived at Podemos. And the consequences go far beyond the loss of political influence. The successive electoral fiascos have reduced the revenues of the party led by Ione Belarra by more than 70%, so management has informed its staff at the headquarters in Madrid and in nine Autonomous Communities about the creation of a party Labor Order File (ERE). The training plans include the closure of all regional centers, which employ a total of 45 staff, and also the reduction of the 61 payslips that have so far been paid at the headquarters.
The regional headquarters that Podemos has waived are those of Aragon, Asturias, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Castile-La Mancha, Cantabria, the Valencian Community, Galicia and Madrid, as expected and confirmed by El Periódico de España Newspaper. In five of them there is no parliamentary representation, in Galicia – with a separate election calendar – since July 2020 and in the others since the regional elections on May 28. In Aragon, the Balearic Islands and Asturias, his presence in the autonomous chambers has been reduced to a single deputy, while he has governed the first two chambers for the past four years. Navarre escapes the fire where Podemos improved his results; Extremadura, Murcia and La Rioja, where he kept them, as well as Andalusia, Catalonia, Castile and León and the Basque Country, where elections had previously been held and where Belarra’s party also managed to avoid disappearing. The headquarters of the federations with the largest workforce to be closed are the Balearic Islands, with eight people on the payroll, and the Valencian and Asturian, with seven people each.
Expulsion from Parliament means a sharp drop in income for the parties, who are thus excluded from the distribution of the grants received based on the election results and also lose the sums that civil servants normally pay to the organization from their salaries on a monthly basis. . After the disaster of regional and local elections and the sharp decline in their presence in the Congress of Deputies as a result of the July 23 parliamentary elections – only five deputies were elected on the Sumar lists – the Podemos leadership counts on their availability The economic decline will be at the state organization by 70% and for the federations that will suffer from the ERE by 90%.
In a letter to those affected, the management argues that after the repeated setbacks in the elections, “a reorganization of the party in all areas is necessary” in order to “adapt to the associated decline in resources”. “This reorganization is faced with the firm objective of ensuring Podemos’ political action and ensuring the continuity of the progress of the transformation policy,” reads the note to the staff of each of the above centers.
There is no works council in most of the affected regional offices, so management has given workers until Wednesday 9th to nominate a representative if they do not have a works council by law, and so start negotiations on the terms of the redundancy. The letter “deeply regrets” that the party has been forced to take these drastic measures, but shows its “conviction” that it can “find the best possible solutions among all”.
In the 12 autonomous communities that elected their respective parliaments on May 28, Podemos – mostly in coalition with Izquierda Unida – had to reduce its representation to more than a third. Of the 46 regional MPs added in those areas, only 14 were.
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