The labour reform This December marks one year since the Government managed to agree with employers Y unions. A year in which the new rules of hiring They have been leaving their mark on employment statistics and modulating the conditions in which part of Spanish workers operate. The main challenge of the new labor reform was to reduce the very high temporality that has historically characterized the Spanish labor market. And if the eventuality continues to be the highest of the European Union -“Rome was not built in a day”, defend the promoters of the norm-, the level of turnover in companies has decreased substantially compared to the pre-covid era. According to a report prepared by the Observatori del Treball de la Generalitat, in 2022 the average number of contracts signed each year by workers has fallen by more than 12%affecting said reduction especially women.
For each woman who started an employment relationship in 2022, a total of 2.3 contracts were signed, compared to 2.2 among men. Some figures that before the pandemic broke out and was 2.6 and 2.5, respectively. “More contracts entered into with men, more men hired than women and a higher labor turnover in women than in men”, they summarize from the Observatori del Treball. Not in vain in 2019 a total of 22.5 million contracts were signed throughout Spain, in a scenario of incipient economic slowdown that was completely distorted a year later due to the covid emergency. And in the absence of December data, this 2022 17.5 million contracts have been signed, 22.2% less.
The robot portrait of which workers are most affected by temporary employment is as follows: woman, under 25 yearswith higher vocational training or university studies and who is employed in those trades qualified as essential. The first two variables -gender and age- are especially relevant, as labor turnover affects women to a greater extent than men and, in terms of age, young people than veterans. According to the Observatori, men over 45 rotate 13.9% less than those under 25. In the case of women the difference is 9.8%.
“High labor turnover, especially if it is unwanted, is a problem for the competitiveness of companies and for workers’ wages, which will be lower. It also implies a risk of unfair competition between companies, because while some make an effort to stabilize templates and in the short term pay a higher price for it, others earn profitability through this high turnover”, explains the director of the Economic Situation of Funcas, Raymond Torres.
There are activities with turnover levels substantially above the average, among which all those trades specializing in caring for people stand out. For example, the and the sanitary They are among those who sign the most contracts throughout the year, an average of between 3.7 and 3.1 per worker, depending on whether they are male or female. Another case is that of the professionals of home care either residences, between 3.4 and 2.9 contracts per worker each year. On the contrary, the directors of the public administrationssenior department managers commercial and the professionals of technologies of the information practically only sign a contract per year.
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Apart from the economic efficiency that companies -as a whole- lose with a high turnover of templates, this also supposes a drag on the opportunities of the workers. “It makes it difficult for them to return to work once the contract has ended, because having worked in many companies on their resume can generate the image of a problematic worker. In addition, there are certain skills that are only acquired once the employee has spent time in the same position”, points out Torres, from Funcas.
This lack of stability is also a slab for the mental health of workers. “Until now this issue has been raised from an economic point of view. After an excessive workload, this is the element that generates the most anguish among people. A young person cannot consider a life project such as leaving home or forming a family if they don’t know where they will work next month. If this situation goes on forever, their mental health is diminishing. And in the case of the elderly, not knowing if they will have work or not next week to support their children or to pay his house also generates a lot of anguish”, points out the secretary of union policy of the UGT of Catalonia, Nuria Gilgado.