‘If you fall into the dialogue of the far right, the far right wins’: Spain’s deputy PM on the need for workers’ rights

Yolanda Díaz Pérez: ‘The impact of our bill was positive almost immediately.’ Photograph: Pedro Ruiz

Spain’s leftwing deputy prime minister, Yolanda Díaz Pérez, has a message for Labour politicians as the UK government’s employment rights bill takes its next step to becoming law this week: take heart from our success.

With business groups in the UK issuing dire warnings about the impact of the workers’ rights package, Díaz, the minister of labour and social economy, remembers her own government’s battle when it thrashed out radical labour laws that came into force in 2022. “We went through nine months of hell, literally. We had the press against it, academia, research centres – everybody was saying this was going to contribute to unemployment and not eradicate it,” she recalls.