Labor Proposes Limiting The Maximum Duration Of The New ERTE Model To One Year

Companies may apply the Employment Sustainability Mechanism (MSE), the new scheme called to replace the current extraordinary ERTEs, for a maximum of one year if an agreement is reached with the workers’ representation and for six months if there is no agreement. .

This is reflected in the latest document of the Ministry of Labor and social agents, to which Efe has had access, and which also includes news regarding the limits to temporality , some issues that the Government, employers and unions will address again at the meeting from the labor reform table next week.

Among the details that this proposal advances, is that companies may request these new post-pandemic temporary employment regulation (ERTE) files when they demonstrate economic, technical, organizational or production causes (ETOP) or due to the requalification needs of their workers to guarantee their permanence in the company.

Also in the case of professional transition processes of workers to jobs in other companies or sectors.

The post-pandemic ERTE will have exemptions and unemployment benefit
The document states that companies and workers affected by one of these new schemes will have access to “benefits in terms of contributions and unemployment protection” , which must be determined in a subsequent regulatory development.

However, the company’s contribution benefits will be conditional on maintaining the employment of the affected workers for up to six months after the end of the application of the MSE .

The exemptions in the contributions will also be conditioned to the development of training actions and, in the event that the mechanism is applied in processes of professional transition to other companies or sectors, the relocation of at least 20% of the affected workers.

During the application of the MSE , overtime, outsourcing of the activity and new hires will be prohibited .

In the last extension of the pandemic ERTE, which will be fully operational in November, training already influences the aid that companies receive, in the form of exemptions in the contributions they pay to Social Security.

In this scheme, the bonuses amount to 80% if they give this training and this support is lowered to 40% or 50%, depending on the size of the company, if they do not.

Temporary employment, limited to 15% of the workforce
The document also proposes limiting the weight of temporary contracts in structural positions to 15% of the workforce , as a measure to limit a temporary period that is currently 25% in Spain.

In this way, it leaves out of this 15% rate the labor contracts in which there are productive or organizational reasons .

The proposal understands for productive reasons, the “occasional and unpredictable increase, outside of any cycle of regular reiteration of the activity of the company that, even in the case of its normal activity, cannot be attended by its usual staff”.

In this way, seasonal jobs and seasonal activities would be computed at this 15% rate, as well as those that come from contracts, subcontracts or administrative concessions, provided that they carry out the normal activity of the company in an ordinary way.

Regarding the organizational reasons, the text specifies that only the substitutions of a worker with the right to reserve a position or during their vacations will be understood in this way and in them the name of the person substituted and the cause must be specified.

Government and social agents work intensely on this and other points, such as collective bargaining or subcontracting, in order to change, before the end of the year and if possible with the agreement of all parties, key points of the labor legislation committed to Brussels.