Spanish Legislative Bombs
The proposal did not become law - but laid down a marker.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
A pretty significant thing happened back in February that has largely flown under the radar. I had missed it myself. Thanks to Jessica Friday for bringing it to my attention earlier this month.
The short story is that leaders in Spain proposed a change to Spanish law to ensure that workers had more representation at corporations in Spain. The idea is to give Spanish workers a greater voice and greater ownership stake in Spanish corporations.
The report by the High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work was convened by the Vice President and Minister of Labor of Spain, Yolanda Díaz, and the Secretary of State for Employment, Joaquín Perez Rey in February 2025.
The recommendations of the expert committee are thus:
The Expert Committee on Democracy at Work recommends that the Spanish Government and its social partners implement the following strategic approach, designed to transform Spanish firms into Europe’s most participatory and innovative organizations. This strategy promotes labor investorsʼparticipation structured around the two complementary pillars identified in Article 129.2: voice and ownership and provides tools and recommendations for use at the national and European levels.
VOICE:
1. Reinforcement and new legal requirements for worker participation in company operational decisions, including reinforcing the prerogatives of Works Councils and Employee Delegates in particular with a new Co-decision Right to Shape and Consent to the deployment of AI at work 2. Inclusion of workers in strategic decisions via Boards, with minimum statutory thresholds designed in alignment with, and seek to advance upon, European best practices in codetermination (1/3 of workers on board seats for firms with employees between 50 and 1000 employees, beyond 1000 employees: 1/2 of workers on board seats)
OWNERSHIP:
1. Minimum statutory thresholds starting with opening access to 2% of share ownership to workers. 2. New Citizensʼ Funds designed to acquire shares and accelerate the transfer in order to make Spanish firms more resilient, and less dependent on extractive financial actors, and a transition plan supported by new ESOP-type financing mechanism for workers to acquire their companyʼ shares in anticipation of a founder or ownerʼs retirement.
Translation
This simply means that Spanish workers would have a greater voice in corporate decision making through increased representation on work councils and the boards of certain companies - including half of the board seats for big companies.
Spanish workers would also have increased ownership in the companies in which they work. This step is meant to help keep the the ownership of Spanish companies more in the hands of the workers at these companies, and not at extractive shareholders with no real connection to Spain itself.
Can we not have nice things?
Alas, the Spanish Congress ultimately rejected this non-legislative proposal. The loss is a speedbump, not the end of the story.
These non-legislative proposals are meant to engender public deliberation, in preparation for ultimate legislative action. The battle was lost, but the war is not over.
Expect this idea to grow in the Spain - and maybe other places as well.
First Scotland, now Spain. Who is next?
For those that don’t remember, The Community Wealth Building Act 2026 in Scotland was designed to generate, circulate and retain wealth in local communities - rather than see it shipped away to shareholders or other entities outside of the community. The legislation seeks to help shut down the extractive economic model that is the norm today and help communities build resilience and community. The legislation is an acknowledgment that our current economic system too often exploits communities and does not serve them.
Expect other places to copy what Scotland and Spain have done. The call to give workers more power and to keep more wealth in the communities that create it are gaining power around the world. If there are other places in the world where similar things are happening, please share them with the class.
If you want the leaders where you are to follow the Scottish and Spanish example, tell them.
Postscript: “Spanish Bombs” is the best Clash song. Discuss.
London Calling. No contest.
"These non-legislative proposals are meant to engender public deliberation, in preparation for ultimate legislative action.”
Deliberation leading to Legislation.
Yes.
This is the strategy we need today, to rewrite our social narratives, of the possible and the permissible, and update our social norms, of the right, the true, the good and the beautiful, so that these new norms can then be codified into new laws.
Deliberation is a process of popular participation in curated conversations at the vanguard of public discourse, to hold our institutions of social choosing accountable for authenticity and integrity in their individual exercises of their institutional authority/power true to their institutional agency/purpose/mission.
That discourse must begin with a stock-take on the institutional architecture of human social choosing, to make sure that our inventories of institutional agencies is complete, and to rectify our taxonomies of institutional authority in society.
An important chunk of that institutional architecture is missing in our current narrative.
That is the agency of Pensions & Endowments to transform socially purposed savings into other than privately self-interested capital to finance non-shareholder purposed entities doing business within the carrying capacity of the planet.
Deliberation on this agency is the gateway to Degrowth by Design.