The new ‘minister’ of Empresa i Treball, Roger Torrent , has decided to release his mandate by visiting the Seat facilities in Martorell . The first visit of the Republican leader was to the first Catalan company in number of workers in Catalonia, which currently employs 15,300 people.
Torrent seeks to weave ties with the automobile firm, after the Generalitat gave a sit-in to the head of the Volkswagen Group , Herbert Diess, when on March 5 he visited the Catalan plant to present the firm’s electromobility plans . The reason why neither the then head of the Company, Ramon Tremosa(from JxCat), neither the then ‘vice president’, Pere Aragonès , appeared at the factory because they did not coincide with either the King or the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez .
Torrent has visited the facilities of the automobile firm in Martorell, where he has met with the president of Seat, Wayne Griffiths . “Seat is important not only from a historical point of view, but because it has been a key agent in all the transformations of the country’s production model”, declared the ‘minister’. “In the coming months we will specify and announce the administrative participation of this transition process towards electric mobility”, he added.
The new ‘conseller’ is not only responsible for the Department of Business, but after the reorganization of the new Government he also directs the competences in matters of Work. In a clear nod to this duality of responsibilities, Torrent has scheduled his visit to Seat to end it with a meeting with the president of the works council, Matías Carnero .
Carnero has been in charge of the legal representation of the workers of the motor company for more than two decades and is, in turn, president of the UGT de Catalunya.
Pending subjects
Torrent, as a new ‘minister’, has several pending issues that directly concern Seat. The first was to ‘pamper’ the car firm, hurt by the rudeness of the Catalan administration last March. From the business world at that time the decision of the leaders of the Generalitat was criticized and from employers such as Foment del Treball it was described as “ridiculous”.
Although Torrent not only has pending affections with Seat. The president of the firm, Wayne Griffiths, criticized in a recent interview in EL PERIÓDICO the lack of involvement of the Catalan administration for professional training projects for the automobile. “It is one of the issues that I want to discuss with the Government of Catalonia,” said Griffiths; missing an interlocutor on the other side.
Precisely a few kilometers from the Seat factory in Martorell, the Generalitat has had a training center in place since 2015 and that cost the taxpayer 17.6 million euros . Practically empty, with only some occupational courses that fill 10% of the capacity for 14,000 students that have the facilities. And while the Center de Formació Professional de la Automoció is almost empty, Seat is expanding its own facilities to train the new generation of operators who assemble the electric car.
