The fees of self -employed to Social Security from 2026, which progressively approach a percentage of their profits with the new system launched in 2023, is one of the main tasks of the ministry directed by Elma Saiz for the return of summer. Negotiation will not only address this issue, as the ATA, UPTA and UATAE autonomous groups claim. The quotas are the “main” matter, this week pointed out Borja Suárez, secretary of State for Social Security, but the government also opens to improve again the provision due to cessation of activity, also known as the unemployment of the self -employed, as it already did in the negotiation of 2022.
The cessation of activity was called until a few years ago a “failed” benefit by all autonomous groups. With a logic similar to that of unemployment benefit for salaried workers, it aims to guarantee income to self -employed who are forced to close their businesses and have quoted the minimum required for it. However, this strike – which manages the mutual social security collaborators – barely recognized a minority of applicants. Last year he denied almost half of the applicants (46%). So far this year, 60% of the requests have been rejected, according to data published by Social Security.
In 2019, the PSOE monocolor government approved a first reform that made the activity for cessation of activity, until then, while expanding its protection, for example, doubling its duration until the two years of ‘unemployment’ in front of the previous twelve months. In 2022, when the new quota system was approved for self -employed to quote according to their profits, access to the benefit was facilitated, with respect to the minimum of demanded contribution, and new modalities of partial cessation were also created and other assimilated to the new ERTE for cyclic and sectoral crises approved in the labor reform.
The autonomous groups that negotiate with the Government at the Social Dialogue Board recognize that these changes have improved access to cessation. But they insist that they are still “insufficient”, since the system still leaves many freelancers without coverage despite the closing of their businesses since they have quoted for this contingency in recent years. Therefore, ATA, UPTA and UATAE demand that the government also address this issue, together with other issues such as access to subsidy for over 52 years, in the negotiation of the fees that will start in September.
“It is an adequate time to evaluate and introduce the elements in that benefit [cese de actividad] and in others that could be. This is the time to do so, ”the Secretary of State for Social Security replied this week, to questions from this medium. In the Ministry of Social Security they do not advance in what sense these improvements can go, since the negotiation process” has not even begun. ”
An observatory of the benefit that has never gathered
The Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) union also claimed a “substantial improvement” in the provision of the freelancers, for which the head of Social Protection, Carlos Bravo, regretted that the Ministry of Social Security has not fulfilled the agreement reached in 2022 for the monitoring of this aid.
In the Law of July 2022, it was approved that, “within three months, and with the objective of improving the effectiveness and coverage of the provision due to cessation of activity due to economic causes” of autonomous workers, “an observatory for the analysis and monitoring of its operation”, composed of social security representatives, of the most representative business and union organizations, as well as the autonomous associations. “For this purpose, periodically, it will propose those measures aimed at adapting the regulation and coverage of self -employed workers for this contingency,” the norm collected.
The observatory was finally created in February 2024, long after the marked deadline, and after the first meeting for its constitution, it has never met again, denounced Carlos Bravo, with the consequent lack of analysis and diagnosis that this organ could have done. In the Ministry they recognize that the Observatory “is pending” and that it will also be addressed with social agents, since they indicate that “it can be a very useful tool.”
Most rejections for not being able to justify the involuntary cessation
Autonomous groups focus their criticisms, especially on the requirements that are required today to demonstrate the involuntary cessation of business. In 2024, of the 10,945 requests rejected by mutuals, 62% was due to “not prove the cessation.” Only 6% should not prove the minimum quoted and 3% not to be aware of the payment of the fees. Another 28% is due to “other causes”, without further precision, according to social security statistics.
“Workers have many difficulties to demonstrate that the closure is not because of their will,” they indicate in UATAE, which point out that this leads to many occasions to even ask for the benefit. In 2024, there were just less than 24,000 applications, a fact that also considers “scarce” in CCOO. Among the requirements that generate more problems, self -employed groups indicate those that have to do with billing losses, especially in workers within the module system.
In addition, these criteria to justify the cessation “are not the same according to the different mutuals,” highlights the president of UPTA, Eduardo Abad, which leads to inequalities and different interpretations of the norm that the autonomous groups require the government to solve. A third of the claims filed from self -employed workers to which the aid was denied were estimated, 607 last year, so they are people to whom the benefit corresponded.
Although in September they will present their proposals at the negotiating table, in UPTA they consider that a system must be walking in which the business closure itself and the leave as an autonomous right to the provision for cessation. “It has been quoted for it,” says Eduardo Abad, who adds that he could link to the active job search, as is the case with employees who perceive unemployment.
“If we converge on obligations, we must also do so in social protection,” they also respond in UATAE, which, like the rest of self -employed groups, focuses on access to unemployment subsidy for over 52 years. “There are no reasons to exclude the self -employed of this aid, which is not contributory, but assistance,” they highlight. However, the subsidy currently demands to meet the conditions to access a contributory pension. That is, having quoted 15 years, at least two in the last fifteen.
Source: www.eldiario.es
