"The
somewhat quixotic idea of an extra payment for the workers, the paga
extraordinaria
– now
extended to two payments in June and December – began
as
a Christmas bonus (known as un aguinaldo) of a week’s wage to
workers, ordered by Franco’s Government in the winter of 1944. The
edict was extended the following year and declared to be permanent.
Two years later, in 1947, a similar payment was ordered to celebrate
what would now be May Day, but was then the 18th of July (the date of
the 1936 Coup d’état). Later, after Franco’s death, this second
payment was moved to June. In 1980, a new agreement with the unions,
never changed to this day, changed the system of the ‘fourteen
payments’, which could, as agreed by the workers, be paid either as
twelve regular monthly or fourteen (irregular) payments, but, from a
previously accorded annual payment. In reality, the workers are no
longer paid more, but by spreading the payments in this way, the tax
paid by the employers is actually slightly reduced. Further, as the
Government dropped the extra payments for the funcionarios
in
2012 (part of which they promise to make up just after
the
December 2015 elections), workers are effectively having the wool
pulled over their eyes. One thing which we can expect from the Troika
sooner or later will be an end to this odd system originated as a
workers’ bonus by Franco."
More
from this very well-informed source here.
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