The CC OO union wants to put an end to the excessive use of additional hours in part-time contracts and other dysfunctions that especially affect newer workers. The young people of the union have detected, through numerous assemblies held throughout Spain, a series of scourges that hinder the professional and social takeoff of their lives – the age of emancipation in Spain exceeds 30 years -, so they have prepared a series of concrete proposals to reverse this situation. All these initiatives have been collected in a document titled They will hear us in which they include labor issues, access to housing, the fight against inequality and discrimination or mental health, and which was presented this Friday in Madrid.
In labor matters, young union members are clear about demanding two actions. On the one hand, they demand the reinforcement of the Labor Inspection so that overtime hours are paid; and secondly, they demand a reform of the regulation of part-time contracts, very common as a way of entering a company for young people. Specifically, they ask that article 12 of the Workers’ Statute be modified “to determine the causes that may give rise to the realization of additional hours and establish mechanisms for consolidating the habitual use of these hours to ordinary hours to transform part-time contracts. full time”. That is, if a certain volume of complementary hours is exceeded, the contract is no longer partial.
The average annual net salary in 2023 was €12,062.59 (€861.61 in 14 payments) for youth between 16 and 24 years old, according to the data taken by the study from the Emancipation Observatory of the Youth Council of Spain. This means that, according to the union’s confederal secretary of Youth, Adrià Junyent, one in five young people who work is considered poor, as well as half of the young people who live in rent. The leaders of CC OO attribute this labor poverty to business practices such as double salary scales and worse job entry conditions; or to the current salary structures that once again place the weight of salary improvements on seniority benefits (a benefit that was almost extinct but is now being recovered in the agreements).
“We must put an end to this kind of labor mili that it seems has been assumed that young people have to pay,” said the general secretary of CC OO, Unai Sordo, who accompanied Juyent in the presentation of the proposals. “I am not saying that there cannot be specific situations of entry into employment for young people, as long as they respond to an objective reality and are always highly valued over time,” the union leader specified. And he continued: “There are some jobs that may require those times, always estimated, of adaptation; But there are others who do not”. What’s more, Sordo added that if the problem were only that it would not be so serious, but he has denounced that the greatest discrimination against young workers is “that the criteria of the agreements are not met and they are made to enter lower categories not only their training but rather the effective work they do.” “Either people in the company organize to fight it, or report it to the union,” he added.
Both union leaders have appealed to the need to eradicate discrimination even before young people enter the workplace, during the selection processes. Juyent has considered it convenient for works councils to be present whenever possible at job interviews, “to ensure that there are no questions [por parte de la empresa] as if the woman is pregnant or plans to be pregnant.” And she has advocated for the extension of “blind curricula”, without photos, to combat the discrimination suffered by young LGBT people.
Access to housing, the biggest burden on the economy
However, for Sordo, the vital precariousness that youth suffer today is even more mediated by the difficulties in accessing housing than by the worse conditions for entering the world of work. In his opinion, the lack of an adequate public housing stock and the “financial-real estate alliance” that has existed for years to dope the market and boost prices, “are now the biggest burden on the Spanish economy” and what is preventing adequate socialization of youth. “It is a problem of the first magnitude for which no other policy will serve other than very ambitious measures in terms of housing,” he explained.
In this sense, the union’s proposal is also clear: given that the creation of a rental housing stock requires many years to be implemented, the leaders of CC OO have asked the Government this Friday to rethink the Housing Law to enable to the municipalities to put caps on rental prices. Even assuming that the legislation grants the autonomous communities the power to limit these prices, Sordo has advocated for the benefits that would come from the possibility that a city council could do so and if the neighboring city does not do so and its prices skyrocket. “The mayor of the latter would have to be accountable and take action,” he exemplified. And he has concluded that the proposal and the analysis made by the union “is not about young people against pensioners (…) nor about tenants against seniors who have been able to buy a home with a lot of effort, but about an equitable distribution of benefits.” .
