Lorenzo Amor

(Córdoba, 1965) has been president of the Association of Self-Employed Workers (

ATA

, the most representative organization of self-employed workers in Spain) since 2004, a position that he has combined since September 2019 with a

vice-presidency of the CEOE.

In an interview with EL MUNDO in his office at the employer's headquarters, Amor takes the opportunity to denounce, regardless of the questions, what he considers an "

anomaly

" in our system: "that a self-employed person who has debts with Social Security and who retires at the legal age, loses the right to collect the public pension, when Social Security could compensate part of the pension to pay off that debt and collect the rest".

The CEOE did not attend the meeting on the Minimum Wage with the Ministry of Labor, but later proposed in writing an increase to 1,040 euros. Is there a risk that this document will be ignored by having planted the negotiating table? Entrepreneurs have been accused that we did not want to raise wages, but those of the agreement have risen 3.03%.

In March we will see that on average they have risen by 3.5%, which is how much public wages have risen.

We know that the SMI has to rise and we propose an increase of 4% for 2023, a rise that will be one point more than that of public employees.

But we only agree on a moderate increase of 4%, which will alleviate second-round inflation, if two requirements are met: one, that a 20% reduction in social contributions be made in the agricultural sector and, two,

that the Administration adapt public contracts to the rise in wages. And is there no risk that the Ministry will not take this proposal into account after the rudeness? We have not made any rudeness.

The vice president has skipped an agreement, she has lost all credibility and she knew we were not going to go.

We did not go to a meeting on training on Friday, we did not go to a meeting of the self-employed on Monday and we did not go to the SMI meeting on Wednesday, which was to be consulted, because raising the SMI is the responsibility of the Government.

The Government has raised it when it wanted, even when we were against it.

Consultations traditionally are always in writing, although lately politicians like to have their photo taken at meetings, and this meeting has been convened just on the day and at the time that the CEOE held its Board of Directors.

Do you think it was on purpose? I don't know, but of course we wonder why the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, has not summoned.

If the Government knows that the tables are broken with the Ministry of Labor due to breach of the agreements, it would have been easier for it to have convened another ministry.

There are other inter-ministerial meetings that CEOE and Cepyme are attending.

The 1,040 euros that you propose are very close to the 1,046 euros to which the SMI recommends the Committee of Experts to raise as a minimum, is there room for negotiation? With the SMI there is no negotiation, the Government always sets the figure and they are lentils: o take it or leave it.

We, to a consultation that the law establishes,

We have already stated what our position is and we have fulfilled our constitutional duty in accordance with the four parameters that the rise in the SMI must mark.

The thing about going to a meeting to take a photo of us... there are those who are in the electoral campaign, we are not. The photos are then ruled out... The CEOE will not go to the negotiation tables of the Ministry of Labor until it is suppressed the amendment.

Why can a self-employed person who has employees support a rise in the SMI of 4% and not 8%? Because we are not talking about a one-off rise of 8% this year.

When we are talking about 4%, we are talking about a rise of 40 euros for 14 payments, which is 560 euros per year.

If we talk about 8%, it is 1,120 euros.

The problem is that it is not only what the worker earns,

is that to maintain that job between contributions and social security you need to sell 2,000 euros to pay for that job, without taking into account other expenses.

The Bank of Spain has already warned that in many activities it is difficult to maintain employment.

The SMI does not focus on large companies, which are the ones making profits.

20,000 self-employed workers have been lost in commerce, 3,000 in industry, 2,000 in agriculture and 3,000 in the hospitality industry.

We are aware that these sectors will find it more difficult to accept the rise in the SMI, but the fact is that the minimum wage does not allow discrimination by sector or by community.

Will 2023 be a better year for the self-employed? This year it will close with a loss of between 2,000 and 3,000 self-employed workers.

It has been a very bad year, a large part have endured with everything that has fallen,

but last year ended with a growth of about 50,000 self-employed.

It will be the first year since 2013 that Spain loses self-employed workers and that is very bad news, and we start 2023 with great suspicion because there is a lot of uncertainty.

The generation of employment is going to be very tenuous. Have there already been self-employed workers who have begun to file bankruptcy proceedings? There has been a significant increase in bankruptcy proceedings that has led the Government to reactivate the bankruptcy moratorium.

When we talk about the growth of the self-employed, we talk about net results, differences between registrations and cancellations.

The registrations this year have grown little, but what have risen a lot are the casualties.

Highs rise 5% and lows, 20%.

Is it possible that these losses have been because there has been a transfer to salaried employment? In this house we have studied it but when we see that the losses occur in commerce, agriculture, hospitality, industry... you realize that there is no transfer .

It is difficult for a merchant to close his premises to become an employee.

Andalusia, the Community of Madrid and the Region of Murcia offer zero quota for the new self-employed in 2023, will there be a pull effect? ​​Undoubtedly in a globalized world it is not surprising that if in Andalusia being self-employed for the first two years has zero quota, because the community subsidizes it, this can mean that in some bordering areas and especially in activities that do not require premises, there may be more possibilities for them to go there. In the negotiation of pensions,

Is there a possibility of reaching an agreement before December 31? The first thing that has to be is a political agreement and there isn't one.

We are being asked at the table an increase in the computation period that is not in the recommendations of the Toledo Pact, that the unions do not see and neither do we.

And, in addition, they propose a new benefit in the Intergenerational Equity Mechanism and it returns to the ATM of companies and the self-employed to pay pensions.

Pensions are happily raised, but when money is needed it goes to companies like the one who goes to the ATM.

Pensions have to go up but it would still be necessary to reflect on whether everything can be maintained under the concept that companies and the self-employed pay for everything with their contributions.

I come from a Latin American country where the public pension is 22% of the last payroll, here it is practically 3.5 times that. In Spain, would we want the pension to be 22% of the last payroll? No, I'll give you a piece of information .

Spain is the country where the most is returned from the last payroll.

The European average is around 50%.

I am not saying that pensions will go down, but I am saying that perhaps at some point it can be considered that the minimum and maximum pensions do not rise equally.

What cannot be is that to maintain this, prices have to be raised, because there comes a time when the cow does not give more milk.

Many companies cannot bear this and we are losing business competitiveness, because we are the country in Europe with the highest prices if we add what the worker and the company pay, and that is unbearable.

Employment taxes are being established that grow more and more.

It is noticeable that there are many people who have not paid a salary in their lives and do not know what you have to sweat to pay a salary. Is there any increase in bases that the CEOE could accept? A moderate increase like the one that was proposed at the beginning , 1% per year, for example, but that option is no longer on the table.

The agreement then is complicated... It is impossible as the approaches are.

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