An audit of psychosocial risks at Mercasa, carried out at the request of the Labor Inspectorate after the suicide of a manager under criminal investigation by the Madrid court, detected a “very high” risk for more half of the company’s staff. public on aspects such as workload.
The study, to which elDiario.es had access, was carried out by the prevention company Cualtis and is dated December 28, 2020. Nine months after the suicide in the toilet of his home, in the early morning of March 2 of the same year, by Jorge SC
Jorge was responsible for planning within the financial department of Mercasa and advisor to several subsidiaries. He committed suicide after years of harassment and grueling work hours, daily and on weekends. Today, a Madrid judge is investigating allegations of crimes against worker safety, harassment and reckless homicide, in a case promoted by the prosecutor’s office and his widow, who has refused to make statements.
The Cualtis report was carried out at the request of the Labor Authority, which would eventually sanction Mercasa in March 2021 for the lack of measures to mitigate psychosocial risks, the lack of control of workers’ time and for failing to assess the work of this deceased leader. , according to a police report sent to court last January.
The risk assessment study does not mention this tragic event, which was reported internally to Mercasa staff as a heart attack and for which three people are currently under investigation, including a senior Mercasa executive , Agustín García-Cabo, maximum responsible for the area in which Jorge worked.
This risk assessment carried out at the end of 2020 showed that 5% of Mercasa employees reported situations of “psychological violence” at work. According to 12.5%, there was “rarely” “physical violence”. In the region of the deceased, the percentage was 15.4%.
Nearly half of the staff were unaware of the action protocol against workplace harassment that was in effect at the time of Jorge’s death. He never reported the harassment he suffered from another person under investigation in these criminal proceedings, his direct boss, then-financial director Marta Olalquiaga, to whom the police report sent to court attributes continuous “harassment” to his subordinates. Olalquiaga was fired ten days after Jorge’s suicide, after refusing to sign the accounts of a subsidiary.
With employees teleworking due to the pandemic, the risk report was drawn up in the last days of the first year of the health crisis, when the Spanish public network of wholesale markets managed to supply large distribution chains without interruption of supply, unlike other European countries. country.
The study describes the situation of Mercasa’s psychosocial indicators as “favorable”, except in three areas: “a situation that could be improved is indicated” in “the factors of workload, participation/supervision and interest in the worker/remuneration”.
Regarding workload, 62.5% of the workforce presented a “very high” (52.5%) or “high” (10%) risk. The perception of high risk, “generalized to all profiles”, was more pronounced in the Shops and Centers areas (with 90.9% at “very high” or “high” risk) and in the Planning and Management Department. Strategy (76.9%), where Jorge worked until his suicide.
Cualtis, head of the Risk Prevention department at Mercasa at the time, assessed the workload based on time pressure, the attention effort required or the number and difficulty of the tasks, the work involved. Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, weekly rest time and compatibility with social life. .
To quantitatively assess risk, a psychosocial questionnaire was used. For the qualitative analysis, a specific working group composed of worker representatives and the third investigated in this criminal procedure, the human resources manager at the time, Maite Valls.
The report detects a “very high” risk for 67.5% of staff and “high” for 15% regarding employee participation in aspects such as hiring staff, changes in management or in production systems and the supervision of their tasks.
In the “Interest for the worker/Remuneration” section, in general 57.5% of workers report being in a high or very high risk situation. “At least 75%” say “there is no information” about their promotion possibilities or their situation in the company. Or, if it exists, it is “insufficient”. This “is accentuated by the workers’ perception of job instability due to the criminal proceedings opened before the National Court”.
The investigation included several questions about the investigation carried out by the Central Operational Unit (UCO) into allegations of corruption at Mercasa in Angola, which led to the dismissal of senior management in 2017. This criminal procedure, still pending trial, made Jorge one of the links with sending the financial information requested by the Civil Guard.
58% of those questioned recognize that the procedure affects their personal and/or professional life and are concerned about its impact on the company and on their job stability. For 5%, this caused anxiety attacks or difficulty falling asleep.
“Violent situations”
5% declare that “there are frequent situations of Psychological Violence at Work”: “threats, insults, depression, personal exclusions…”. These situations occurred “constantly” for 7.7% of respondents in the area where Jorge’s apartment was located.
And “often” in the same percentage in this area and at the Presidency, at Audit and at the General Secretariat; and in 25% of cases within the Business Development Department. In all departments, the rates are “rare” in percentages ranging from 30.8% to 54.5%.
In conflict situations between workers, 5% indicated that the company “let the people involved resolve the problem.” Situations of physical violence were reported “rarely” in three departments: Commerce and Centers (18.2%), Planning and Strategy (15.4%) and Department of Corporate Development and Institutional Relations (11.1%).
Only 34% of workers knew that the company had a formal procedure to prevent cases of workplace harassment. 48% did not know.
Following this risk assessment, the Labor Inspectorate sanctioned Mercasa for non-compliance with occupational risk prevention rules. The public company unsuccessfully appealed the fine to the General Directorate of Labor. In March 2023, he hired the law firm Ramón y Cajal to appeal to the social court.
Asked by elDiario.es, Mercasa does not comment, among other things, on what measures it has implemented in recent years to try to improve the working environment or how many workers are currently on sick leave due to anxiety. She limits herself to emphasizing “her respect for open legal proceedings” and that she “is very committed to creating safe and healthy work environments”.
“In recent years, measures have intensified to implement internal policies on flexible working hours and digital disconnection. In addition, it has psychosocial risk assessment programs and a health and safety committee in which worker representatives participate. This approach allows us to constantly evaluate and strengthen prevention and improvement actions,” explains Mercasa.
In his statement as defendant on September 26, García-Cabo made it clear that neither then nor today did he have “any” responsibility in the area of human resources: “It depends on the General Secretariat ”, whose maximum responsibility in In 2020 he served as State Attorney Jesús Moreno, Director General of Litigation at the Ministry of Justice since 2023.
The general director of Mercasa defended that in recent years “there has been a positive development in terms of people’s satisfaction at work.” He denied that the workload was excessive or that it was common to work outside of normal hours when Jorge committed suicide; He said that at that time teleworking did not exist and that he was “never” encouraged to work outside the office. And he argued that before the suicide he was ordered to compensate for overtime with time off.
García-Cabo, the only person investigated who has testified so far, explained before the judge that, despite the 2020 assessment, a Grant Thornton report assessed that in the financial area “the charges were appropriate” and that It’s “a question of getting organized” because this service requires “ordered” work subject to a very specific timetable. He defended that the person Jorge was in charge of then took up his duties “without any problem”.
Another survey on psychosocial risks carried out in November 2023 again detected “an unfavorable situation” regarding workload at Mercasa, with a “high” or “very high” risk for 56.6% of workers.
In this case, the questions were not comparable to those in 2020. They related to “the possible identification of potential situations of harassment” and 37.7% of employees declared that interpersonal conflicts existed “frequently” or “constantly “. 13.2% “frequently” experience psychological violence. 9.4% suffered from it “constantly”, according to the report to which elDiario.es had access.
Already in 2016, four years before Jorge’s suicide and without the Civil Guard having broken into the Mercasa offices, another similar analysis had detected a high risk in practically all departments with regard to participation mechanisms and of control and with regard to the interests of the worker and compensation. . The three judgments which recognized that Jorge’s suicide was a work accident indicate that the company did not take measures to remedy the situation.
Mercasa reorganized its organizational chart a few days ago, where García-Cabo remains economic and financial director. The Human Resources sector now depends on Maite Castillo, one of the recruits of the president of Mercasa from 2018 until last April, José Ramón Sempere.
A physiotherapist by training (she then refocused on communication and management), Castillo joined the group a few weeks after the suicide of Jorge from the private health group Vithas in Alicante as director of corporate development and institutional relations of Mercasa. She is now the new director of corporate development and human resources.
