Fátima Báñez cut the number of working days required to get a PER payment from 35 to 20. For years, the Peoples' Party has criticized this worker benefit on grounds that town councils and regions can contract out-of-work day laborers and then give them unemployment benefits.
In its infancy, the PER program tried to help those who were out of a job. But it has survived under various guises since 1986, and some think that it has slowed down rural development and become a hotbed for welfare fraud.
The Populist Party opposition thinks that the program keeps poor voters happy and that reducing PAR payments is a way of masking unemployment levels.
