Like a “sangria”. This is how they define from the Association of Independent Workers (ATA) of Castilla y León the evolution experienced by the sector in recent years. In ten years, they have lost around 16,000 independent contributors, at a rate of between 2,000 and 2,500 fewer the rest of each year, reaching today around 184,000. These are figures of an evolution which ” concerns us” and “a lot,” as the president of the organization, Leticia Mingueza, warned. And another factor that weighs in the sanction: the majority is concentrated between 45 and 55 years oldtherefore in a horizon of ten to twenty years they will reach retirement age, and if they do not find a change of generation which continues to get bogged down or young people who dare to undertake, in this horizon “there will be a major problem,” Mingueza said. .
Mayor, he added, even in rural areas, where independents are “essential” to maintain activity and “establish the population”. And there, underlined the president of the ATA, the role of women is essential, because a woman who settles in a city generally assumes that her family will settle there, she detailed. This is why the group of independent workers is calling for more “support” for conciliation as well as for the return of women to work after pregnancy. They are already a third of those who are embarking on the adventure of entrepreneurship throughout Castile and León and those who “support” a group for which, in general, they demand “sensitivity” from the administrations to “eliminate the problems” and, “above all” that young people “are not” “remove the desire” to undertake, Mingueza asked.
And, he stressed, the causes of this decline are “multiple” and do not come only from population loss. “There are more and more obstacles and spokes in the wheel,” he lamented. Being independent “is not a bed of roses”, but it also allows “to devote ourselves to what we love and which excites us”, declared the president of the ATA.
It is precisely to encourage people to take advantage of this “incomparable personal satisfaction” of creating and having their own business that the Carlos Moro Foundation is launching the fourth edition of the Emprendes Awards, endowed with a prize worth 40 000 euros for the selected project aimed at promoting entrepreneurship in rural areas.
And in a Community like Castilla y León, where only twelve municipalities have more than 30,000 inhabitants and where 38 percent of self-employed workers are concentrated, this group is “essential, fundamental” in the cities for the provision of the services they provide , but also as an element of “the fight against depopulation and aging”. This is why at ATA They demand “better infrastructure” or direct aid for those who start an activity in a city.
