Only 41 companies are asking for state aid to reduce the working day to four days without reducing wages

In total 41 companies submitted applications for state aid test the reduction of working hours to four days a week without lowering wages. The scheme, awarded up to €200,000 per company, targeted 60 or 70 industrial SMEs with up to 250 employees who wanted to pioneer a pilot project to reduce working hours that “promotes productivity improvement” in SMEs, according to the company. which was stated this Wednesday by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism.

Applications are suitable for small and medium-sized companies from different sectors, as confirmed by the ministry, from small and medium-sized companies dedicated to engineering or architecture, to textiles, pharmaceuticals or food. In total, 503 workers will benefit from this reduction in working hours in this first two-year pilot program. “Everyone wins, SMEs and workers,” Minister Héctor Gómez said in a statement, stressing that companies are “open to a new way of organizing their days.”

Although 165 companies requested data from the ministry, 41 finally applied for this pilot program. These are companies from thirteen autonomous communities, highlighting the case of Catalonia, where eleven small and medium-sized companies that applied for the plan come from. They are followed by Andalusia (6), Galicia (4), the Basque Country (4), Asturias (3), Navarre (3), the Canary Islands (3), the Community of Madrid (2), and Cantabria, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and the Balearic Islands with a registered company.

He The maximum amount of the subsidy will be 200,000 euros, which will result from the costs incurred by the company during the first year of the pilot project, although they undertake to maintain it for a minimum of two years. Thus, the total amount of subsidies for the 41 presented projects amounts to 2.81 million euros.

The goal of this experiment, Industry explains, is to “collect data that enables a reliable assessment that can be extrapolated to all small and medium-sized companies in the industrial sector.” Now that the deadline for submitting applications has expired, the evaluation of the projects begins, which will be resolved within a maximum of five months.