The entry into force of the subsidy reform contains a surprise for thousands of discontinuous fixed lines which benefit from the contributory benefit or subsidy. The rule states that starting November 1, reject your company’s appeal “without justified reason” results in the automatic suspension of the service. A legal change that strengthens the power of public employment services to control a problem many businesses face they see their hands tied.
It should be noted that this is a suspension of benefitsnot an extinction (which would mean the loss of the rights generated). But the sanctioned permanent discontinuous worker will not be able to resume his payment until the conditions are met. That is, until he answers a call and becomes inactive again, or gets fired from this or that job.
What is the reason for this change if, in theory, an employee on an interrupted permanent contract who refuses to return to his job should not continue to benefit from this assistance? since he does not fulfill the activity commitment to which he is required? Companies communicate their appeals to the public employment services of the regions and states and can also cross-reference their data with those of Social Security, since inactive discontinuous permanent employees are removed from affiliation, which is canceled upon reinstatement .
But in practice, these mechanisms have not given the expected results because the General Social Security Law It was not explicitly included in cases of suspension of benefits, which generated a complicated situation for companies and with repercussions on public coffers. and it is now fixed, with a new section in Article 271, which also includes the controversial obligation of all unemployed people to file their income tax return.
The government He has already tried to introduce this novelty in the first failed version of the subsidy reform decree approved at the end of 2023.with the expectation that it will come into force in June this year. But Congress canceled this text and the renewal process, with a consensus with social agents, delayed the application deadline to November 1. In its first days, many permanent intermittent employees were surprised when the State Public Employment Service (SEPE) notified them of the withdrawal of the allowance.
Why was this change implemented now, when discontinuous landlines have been in the same conditions for decades? The answer is simple: labor reform. Until now, these contracts were linked to seasonal activities, notably tourist activities (of which the Balearic Islands would be the example par excellence) and due to their characteristics, these situations, if they occur, They have not generated major problems for businesses.
With the new law, its use has been extended to activities of a temporary but recurring nature, with the idea that they would replace temporary contracts or, at least, become a path towards ordinary permanent contracts in sectors where they are underserved. represented, like the. agrarian. But in this broadening of the definition, complex hypotheses have been included, such as the possibility for temporary employment agencies (ETT) to hire according to this modality to make their workers available to their clients.
Nearly 250,000 registrations for services so far this year
The increase in discontinuous permanent employees has led to a notable increase in the number of benefit recipients. To get an idea of its impact, over the first nine months of the year, There were 242,613 initial registrations for services for unemployment and 331,561 collection times by the inactivity of a permanent discontinuous worker.
These are levels which almost triple the average recorded in the years before the pandemic and they are equivalent to 19.7% of total registrations and 15.7% of recoveries recorded so far in 2024. This gives an idea of the volume and volatility of the cost for the SEPE. In fact, the average number of beneficiaries is 123,267, while in 2019 there were 58,328, an increase that has “inflated” indicators such as the coverage rate of unemployment benefits.
However, spending on social benefits is not the main reason for this legal change. Indeed, last year, the number of initial registrations and the average number of monthly beneficiaries remained relatively contained, even if the number of takeovers increased by 9.6%. This suggests that these are short-lived benefits, even if the number of workers benefiting from “recurring” rights increases.
But the fact is that the government has not even counted the number of inactive discontinuous permanent workers registered in employment agencies, even if some estimates speak of a little more than 500,000 of the 700,000 registered as job seekers. employment with an employment relationship (who do not count as registered unemployed). In any case, those who receive the allowance each month, they are less.
The biggest problem the companies that hire these workers have it. In many cases, they find that workers refuse to rejoin the group without the options being clear, because terminating a contract without paying severance pay in these cases involves justifying that the worker has resigned. This results in the loss of the benefit, but it is a path that is not free from legal complications.
The government has left it to the agreements to set the conditions for calls and possible sanctions in the event of non-response to the call, but the ambiguity of the figure continues to dissuade many sectors from using this figure and continue to hire temporary workers. One of the common complaints is that they interpret that the discontinuous fixed systemThose receiving unemployment prefer to exhaust their benefits before accepting a new call.
Is this accusation accurate? There is one sector in which this seems to be a reality: ETTs, whose discontinuous fixed positions receive up to 6 calls on average per year. And this is where the new SEPE requirement has had the most impact. With this, companies have a trick up their sleeve and a way to pressure their workers to accept a call is through withdrawal, even if the Ministry of Labor, which maintains its own “war” with these entities for the irregular use they make of permanent discontinuous employees by employing them in tasks that their clients should assume with their own employees, think more about giving guarantees to the rest of the sectors that they use this figure with complete peace of mind instead of ‘use temporary digits.
