The Labor Inspectorate has launched an anti-fraud campaign on contracting abuses focused on discontinuous permanent workers, according to sources from the Ministry directed by Yolanda Díaz. “Almost 50,000 letters” have been sent to employers upon detecting alleged irregularities that affect some “140,000 contracts, the vast majority of them permanent and discontinuous,” these sources explain.
Work focuses on ETTs for possible fraud in 45,000 jobs
Further
The letters were sent last February, they indicate in the Ministry of Labor, and has focused especially “on the educational sector.” In this, there is controversy about the use of the discontinuous fixed, permanent contract but for intermittent and seasonal situations. The National Court rejected, for example, last February that this figure be used for teachers. In addition, there are other types of staff in the centers for whom their activity is interrupted with classes, such as cleaning and the canteen, among others.
The campaign follows the usual procedure for these actions with notices by letter. The Inspection detects alleged irregularities through the massive crossing of data through its Anti-Fraud Tool and sends letters to companies (or public administrations) so that they correct the illegality within a month or provide evidence that they are complying with the law.
After that period, in which companies can regularize the situation on a ‘voluntary’ basis, the Inspectorate staff acts in cases where the employment situation has not changed. Evaluating the arguments of the employers, if they have given them, or directly investigating the cases if the company has ignored the notice of the Inspection.
A more widely used contract after the labor reform
This is the second campaign of this type to analyze the proper functioning of the discontinuous permanent contract, recalls the Ministry, which already carried out a first one last year, although the labor reform was not yet as widely deployed as it is now. The new legislation promoted this modality to give more stability to these structural but intermittent and/or seasonal positions, which were previously occupied mainly by temporary employees.
After the regulation, these contracts have increased considerably, although they represent a small part (around 7%) of the total number of permanent employees. According to the latest data from Social Security, in March there were an average of 880,000 affiliated discontinuous permanent workers. On the other hand, there were almost 11.5 million ordinary permanent employees.
Although they support this formula agreed upon in the labor reform, the unions have denounced possible abuses on some occasions, in jobs that should have ordinary permanent contracts and for which some companies are resorting to this intermittent formula, something that the Inspection will analyze in these cases. .
In the Ministry they have insisted that the labor authority will analyze all cases rigorously, including those that may affect public institutions, with a large presence in the education sector.
Source: www.eldiario.es
