At the end of the meeting, both ministers gave a brief press conference where they commented on the issues discussed during the meeting by both delegations.
«We had a very good exchange on what the labor law agendas are today, of the policies related to work, of the challenges that technological advances imply, and what we verified is that the challenges are very similar. And beyond the differences that may exist between one country and another in what has to do with labor challenges and responding to our people, our towns, there are very relevant coincidences”.
Díaz recalled that on the occasion of the Global Deal Forum in Madrid, he had met with Minister Mieres and that already on that occasion they had agreed on the conviction that times are changing. “We are tackling enormous technological and digital changes, enormous transformations in the production model, also hand in hand with sustainability, but with a conviction that work must be at the center and this is of maximum unity between both countries”, stressed the Spanish Minister of Government.
“This is a change,” he added, and mentioned that the end of the work has been theorized. “This is not the case, it is not true, not only are we not seeing the end of the work, but we are seeing the work in a completely different way,” she said. Díaz argued that the enormous challenge is to guarantee decent ways of life -as expressed by the ILO- and decent jobs. «Precisely the dialogue that we have had right now has been about digital platforms, the protection of workers and workers. The conviction is to take care of the work, having the workers, the workers and the companies at the center, if we make an ecological transaction it must be fair, if we do not put the productive world inside, we will probably make a mistake ».
And he concluded that both Uruguay and Spain share the conviction of taking on challenges without generating any fear. “We have to generate training, we have to prepare our countries so that this can happen,” he pointed out.
In the same sense, Mieres pointed out that every time there has been a technological change, the question about the end of the work has been raised. «And the answer has always been no, it is not the end of the job, but there has been a challenge that certain job roles fall by the wayside and are replaced by others, and there the great challenge that governments have is how we build the mechanisms to prevent people from being left behind. That is where job training has to play a role so that the weakest can be requalified,” said the minister.
The hierarch received the Spanish authorities accompanied by the undersecretary Mario Arizti, the general director of the Secretariat, Valentina Arlegui, and the general inspector of Labor and Social Security, Tomás Teijeiro.
