The Minister of Social Security, Elma Saiz, announced this Thursday the upcoming opening of two very relevant negotiation tables. The first, already dated, to analyze how the new contribution of the self-employed took place based on their real income and negotiate the new quotas from 2026. The second, more innovative and emerging, to reform temporary disability, in which the Ministry proposes to create “more flexible” situations that allow people to be on sick leave and at the same time work voluntarily, he explained during an informative breakfast at the Nueva Economía Fórum .
The dialogue table on self-employed workers is scheduled for Monday, October 7. In this document, the implementation of the approved reform to adapt the quotas to the “real income” (profits) of self-employed workers will be examined and the path of quotas from 2026 will be negotiated, since only they have agreed on the amounts for 2023, 2024 and 2025.
In the case of workers with lower benefits, contributions have fallen in recent years, while those with higher incomes increasingly contribute more to the system. The reform, approved by former minister Escriva, provides for a gradual adaptation of quotas, which can be extended until 2029.
Elma Saiz also recalled that at that time the “regularization process” of worker quotas began, “which will see its final day around the first quarter of 2025”.
In this process, Social Security compares the contributions paid and the income of the self-employed with the Treasury and determines whether adjustments need to be made. Either upwards, with higher remuneration from workers, or downwards, with a refund of contributions if more than what is due has been paid.
Minister Saiz recalled the importance of contributing according to workers’ income to “protect oneself”, since social protection benefits, such as pensions, maternity and paternity leave or temporary disability leave, are calculated depending on what is cited.
Disability with “more flexible” sick leave
The second negotiating table, on temporary disability, has not yet been officially convened, but it will be “imminent,” declared the minister. The reform aims to adapt temporary disability to current “medical and technological advances” with “more flexible” formulas allowing people to work and be on sick leave at the same time on a voluntary basis, said Saiz.
“There are people who, in certain processes, can perhaps participate in the work. It’s like work and retirement, for which there was very brutal regulation, either you were a worker or you were retired. With the agreement reached [de pensiones]we have made this transition from volunteering more flexible. Well, it’s the same thing for temporary disability,” suggested the head of Social Security.
Elma Saiz gave some examples. “There are processes, for example, someone who leaves or is undergoing treatment for cancer, who perhaps voluntarily and guaranteeing their health and safety, can go to work with a temporary disability which does not is not or who is released or weak Or, in the case of multiple activity, people who are on sick leave in one activity and in another can exercise certain professions,” he clarified.
The minister insisted that this reform would be approached “from consensus, from social dialogue”. “A reform of temporary incapacity must be put on the table to adapt this situation to the times in which we live, to medical and technological advances. This is something imminent at the social dialogue table,” he said.
Social Security sources explain that, “in accordance with what was agreed in the last Pension Pact, a working group on Temporary Incapacity (IT) will be launched, the aim of which will be to, in collaboration with the social agents, monitoring the evolution of IT. and its benefits, the evolution of which is a concern shared by all.
