Alejandra Olcese
Updated Thursday, February 15, 2024-02:31
Negotiation The collapse of unions to negotiate equality plans will be aggravated by the new mobility plans
The
Ministry of Labor
yesterday launched a
new statistic
that measures the coverage rate of collective bargaining, in which it certifies that
91.8% of workers
who have the right in Spain to be
covered by a collective agreement
are, thanks to the work of employers and unions.
This is a statistic prepared from
Social Security records
, since when a worker is registered as a member of the system, the company has the obligation to communicate to which collective agreement he or she is affiliated. Now, the ministry led by
Yolanda Díaz
has been able to access these records and has concluded that the coverage rate of collective agreements has been growing in recent years, going from 91.2% in 2021 to 91.5% in 2022 and to 91.8% in 2023.
In absolute numbers, this means that a total of
14.07 million employees
are protected by an agreement, out of a potential universe that the Ministry limits to 15.3 million workers.
Excluded
are
those who do not have the right to an agreement due to the nature of their work, such as civil servants - including interim ones -, senior officials and members of the boards of directors, ministries of worship (priests or nuns), convicts with work activity, members of cooperatives, parliamentarians or those who carry out social collaboration work.
Although Social Security has provided data for the last three years, there are no previous records that allow for a broader temporal comparison. Until now, to know the incidence of collective bargaining, data collected by
the OECD or the ILO
were used ,
which used another methodology, and which gave a rate of 80% for Spain,
the fifth highest in the European Union
behind Italy. , France, Austria and Belgium.
Our country is one of those with a higher rate because its system of agreements is
statutory
, that is, they apply to all workers in the sector, regardless of the company in which they work, whether or not it belongs to an employer association. and whether or not employees are members of a union. In other countries, on the other hand, the agreements negotiated by a union are only applicable to its members.
For this reason, the Government understands that
social agents
- both unions and employers - carry out "very important work that goes far beyond the representation of their members", as stressed yesterday by the Secretary of State,
Joaquín Pérez-Rey. .
Its statistics are used to praise
the institutional role
that these organizations have and could open the door in the medium term to a
review of their funding sources
. On more than one occasion, social agents have demanded more resources given the volume of negotiation - and, consequently, the necessary training - that has taken place in recent years. Not only in relation to agreements, but also for equality plans or the newly created mobility plans that require their participation.
Groups with more coverage
According to the new statistics, the number of female
workers
covered by the agreement is lower than that of men (88.2% compared to 95%) due to their greater presence in unregulated sectors - such as domestic employees, where it is difficult sign an agreement because there is no employer association that brings together households.
By sector, the
hospitality industry
is the sector with the highest coverage rates, which are also the same for both genders: 98.7%.
At a geographical level, the
Region of Murcia
is the community with the most employees covered - 98.1% of men and 91.8% of women -, while the
Basque Country and Navarra
are the ones with the least due to the greatest weight of the social economy and cooperatives, an economic model in which agreements are not implemented.