March has left an increase in employment and a drop in unemployment in Spain, as usual, and the number of workers is touching historical maximums, but the Popular Party has insisted on Wednesday on the “makeup” of the data by the coalition government, as stated by the Vice Secretary of Economy of the PP, Juan Bravo. But those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo have gone a step further when again internationalizing their opposition strategy, sowing doubts about the progress of the economy in Spain, this time again by the labor market. In fact, the PP has asked Brussels that inactive discontinuous fixed people count as unemployed, something that does not happen in Spain or Eurostat statistics.
“The unemployment registration system in Spain, especially in regard to some workers with fixed seasonal contracts, presents deficiencies that are distorting the data registered by Eurostat,” says the spokeswoman for the PP in the European Parliament, Dolors Montserrat, in a letter sent to the Economy Commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis.
In an explanatory appendix to justify his request, the PP points out that “since Pedro Sánchez is president, the registered strike has been reduced by 20%.” “However, if we take into account effective unemployment (registered unemployment + job seekers in employment), the reduction is only 2% since 2018,” the document adds.
Discontinuous fixed do not count as registered unemployed either now or when the PP ruled, so there has been no statistical change by the coalition government. When Mariano Rajoy was president, of an executive that Dolors Montserrat was part, the “effective unemployment” reference that the PP now mentions was not used either. In those years, with a long financial crisis, Spain reached the historical maximum of around six million people in Paso, according to EPA.
After the labor reform of the Coalition Government, which has reduced temporary contracts, the number of dubriven permanent workers has increased, from the 471,005 of March 2022 until it is around 872,000 people, so the PP now insists now that they do not count them as unemployed when they are inactive means “place to an artificially low unemployment rate”.
The labor reform that the Government agreed with the European Commission (with Dombrovskis as an economic vice president) encouraged the use of discontinuous fixed contracts with the objective of being deployed in seasonal and seasonal positions, until then occupied with temporary and with a high rotation of personnel. This legislative change allowed, therefore, to reduce the storms in exchange for these types of contracts, which are indefinite and lead, therefore, an increase in labor rights, as for example in the case of compensation for dismissal.
Brussels has applauded the results of the labor reform. “Recent data from the Bank of Spain confirm the success of the reform of increasing the number of indefinite contracts and reducing that of temporary or eventual,” he said in the last evaluation of the recovery plan.
Against the Eurostat and the ILO methodology
Although the PP speaks of the fact that the government “makeup” the data, in its correspondence to Brussels, acknowledges that, in reality, Spain is following the community and international methodology, as the Ministry of Labor usually explains. Therefore, those of Feijóo are trying to change this way of measuring unemployment, which in their opinion is showing an improvement of “artificial” unemployment in Spain.
The PP documentation states that “the Active Population Survey (EPA) in Spain and Eurostat apply the ILO methodology”, the United Nations International Labor Organization, which means that “to be considered unemployed, a worker must be actively looking for an actively employment”.
“According to the definition of the ILO, to be considered unemployed, three criteria must be fulfilled: i) not having worked in the reference week, ii) to be available to work in the following two weeks and iii) having actively sought employment in the last four weeks,” recalls the PP. Therefore, in the case of discontinuous fixed workers “who neither work nor seek employment beyond the company with which they have the contract, they are considered inactive”, instead of unemployed, the popular ones lament.
The party highlights several “economic arguments” for which they consider that these people must be considered stops, such as that they have no income, that their continuity in employment “is not guaranteed” (although the company has an obligation to call them if it takes up the activity) and that they must be available to work immediately, “just like an unemployed that seeks work.”
And therefore claims a change in the unemployment accounting system at the community level. “Since problems with the methodology affect European standards as a whole, it is imperative that the commission analyze if these criteria remain adequate to reflect the reality of the labor market of the Member States, especially in contexts of significant labor reforms such as the one carried out in Spain,” says the letter.
“We request that a review of the statistical criteria applied to the accounting of unemployment, as well as greater control and supervision of the existing criteria that allow to more accurately reflect the real situation of the workers with fixed contracts with discontinuous contracts in the European Union,” adds the text, which is accompanied by some questions for Eurostat in which the dubrivenable fixed ones are counted separately.
In the first months of the operation of the labor reform, when there were more controversy over the fixed discontinuous, the Ministry of Labor said that it would provide specific data on workers with this modality of inactive contract. However, then he did not do it and has defended that the statistics currently exist are sufficient to analyze the labor market.
Source: www.eldiario.es
