New Labour Inspectorate campaign against irregular use of part-time recruitment and fraudulent temporary employment

Instruction No. 4/2019 of 7 August 2019 of the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate establishes two new plans for inspection action against fraud implemented in both temporary and part-time contracts.

As reported in our article of May 2018, on 27 July 2018 the Council of Ministers approved the Master Plan for Decent Work for the period 2018-2020, with the fundamental objective of recovering labour rights and improving the quality of employment and working conditions.

This Master Plan for Decent Work, valid until the year 2020, had a bearing on many aspects of employment and, among these, the precariousness of employment, which is reflected in the high rates of temporary work and the abuses produced by the use of part-time contracts, was particularly relevant.

Although both matters are subject to permanent action by the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate, it was considered necessary to strengthen inspection activities. On the one hand, specific operational measures were established in the Master Plan, and on the other hand, the execution of two shock plans, one against fraudulent temporariness and the other against the irregular use of part-time contracts, which have now been renewed because they continue to be two of the main problems in our labour market.

The objective of these two new shock plans is mainly to regularize the fraud detected in the indicated matters and to generate a dissuasive effect in those employers who promote these types of irregularities that produce labor precariousness.

With respect to temporary contracts, special attention will be paid to work and service contracts that have been in force for more than 36 months, the chaining of two or more temporary contracts in the same company, with or without a solution of continuity, for a period of more than 24 months in the last 30 months and possible contracts due to production circumstances with a duration of more than 12 months.

In relation to the other area of action, part-time hiring, fraud will be pursued by monitoring those companies where a high number of hiring has been detected with very low part-time coefficients, which is inconsistent with the business activity carried out.

For the development and implementation of the shock plans explained, the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate is already sending out communications to companies with possible fraud situations, informing them of the data obtained through the so-called “Anti-Fraud Tool”, urging them to review their situation, and warning them of the need to carry out verification inspections in the event of non-regulation. Companies are given a period of one month to carry out this review and regularization.

Once the period of one month from the receipt of the communication has elapsed, once again the “Anti-Fraud Tool” will check the modifications that have been made. Those companies that continue with the initial situation, or have only partially modified it, will be subject to action by the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate for the purpose of verifying compliance with the corresponding regulations, adopting, if necessary, the measures that are required after the analysis of each situation.

It should be noted that the communications themselves warn that business failures to comply with the regulations on contractual modalities are classified as serious infringements in Article 7.2 of the Revised Text of the Law on Infringements and Social Order, which means that companies that do not voluntarily apply the regularisations in the instructions received are subject to payment.

From the Labour Management department of AddVANTE, we remain at your disposal for further information or to resolve any doubts that may arise in relation to this article.