//
you're reading...
Labour market reform, Spain, Uncategorized

The Abuse of Overtime: Case of Spain

Spanish workers three and a half million hours of unpaid overtime a week –  equivalent to more than one hundred thousand jobs in a country with over 17% unemployment. The opposition is pushing for a new law that will expose individual firms for exploiting their workforce in this way, says Vincente Clavero

The effects of the crisis have been amplified in Spain with labour reforms, weapons of mass destruction of jobs. The two labour reforms- that of Zapatero of 2010 and the one introduced by Rajoy of 2012 –  took away rights that had taken decades to win and disarmed the workers in their relations with employers. As was easy to foresee, this brought with it a brutal increase in unemployment and a runaway decline in the quality of employment. Many people, who enjoyed stability and a reasonable salary were put out onto the street and replaced by those on contracts that were worse paid and temporary.

There are those who said then and continue to hold the view that the labour reforms served to avoid worse evils and that without them a recovery was impossible. However, the truth is that, to date, not only have we not reached the pre-crisis employment levels, but the jobs today are of much worse quality. Getting a full-time fixed job is for many Spaniards a chimera, and to have remuneration that is enough to live on is an inaccessible illusion. I do not know what would have happened without labour reforms; but what the catastrophe they have brought for workers is in sight of all.

The worsening conditions of employment very often lead to the purest and most brutal exploitation. An example of this are the extra hours that some employers force on workers, without paying a euro in return. Well, some entrepreneurs do not; but many do, the official statistics tell us. Every week Spanish workers put in no less than three and a half million unpaid overtime hours, work that is therefore completely illegal. That is equivalent to more than one hundred thousand jobs, which could be created for those without work and which could boost the welfare budget, which is not in good health.

The Spanish parliament, on the proposal of the PSOE, has taken into consideration a bill whose objective is to put an end to the abusive prolongation of the working day imposed by employers. Only the ruling Popular Party (PP) and their allies Cuidadanos voted against. If it is finally approved, it will be mandatory for all workplaces to have a reliable record of the clocking on and clocking off of their employees in the future. It must be recorded in the actual schedules, so that the labour inspectorate is able to verify if they conform to current regulations. Will it serve for anything? I do not know, because we know that the law was made to be broken. But at we should make it as difficult as possible those who seek to break it. Unpaid overtime is a scourge; what isn’t permissible is to look the other way and still do nothing.

You can follow Vincente Clavero on Twitter: @vicente_clavero

Vincente Clavero is a journalist, writer and professor in the Faculty of Information Sciences of Madrid Complutense university. His professional career has led him to work for Europa Press, ‘ABC’, ‘Expansión’, ‘Público’ and the regional newspapers of the Prisa group, among other media. He was director of the weekly ‘Gaceta Universitaria’ and the newspaper ‘The Courier of Andalusia’. He has collaborated as a political and economic analyst with CNN +, Cuatro and 13TV. He has published four novels: Su Eminencia’ (2007), ‘Santo serás’ (2011), ‘Yo soy el hijo de Franco’ (2013) y ‘No esperes al rey’ (2016). Es autor también de dos ensayos: ’14 de abril. Crónica del día en que España amaneció republicana’ (2015) y ‘El desahucio de la Monarquía. La prensa ante la llegada de la Segunda República’ (2016), based on the doctoral thesis of 2014.

Translation by Revolting Europe

El Publico

About revoltingeurope

Writer on Europe's Left, trade union and social movements @tomgilltweets or @revoltingeurope

Discussion

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

Twitter Updates

  • RT @Labour4S: .@M_Star_Online Editorial | Britain's water crisis – the case for public ownership morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/brit… https://t.co/Mamg… 4 weeks ago
  • RT @Labour4S: Subscribe to @M_Star_Online from £4.99 a month and help us fight for a socialist Labour Government led by Jeremy Corbyn #jc4p… 4 weeks ago
  • RT @Labour4S: Labour would launch an investigation into the Battle of Orgreave, McDonnell says | @M_Star_Online morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/labo… htt… 1 month ago
  • RT @SweeneySteve: Pls RT: Police attacking women’s march in Istanbul firing rubber bullets and teargas #InternationalWomensDay2019 https://… 1 month ago
  • RT @cliffordcocker: Morning Star Book Review | The People's Republic of Walmart, a challenge to conventional thinking on a socialist planne… 1 month ago
  • RT @cliffordcocker: .@M_Star_Online Fiction Review | Berg, Ann Quin’s novel is a neglected masterpiece ow.ly/cmd130nUAdc #Books #Revi… 1 month ago
  • RT @cliffordcocker: .@M_Star_Online reviews half a dozen #books weekly from a #socialist, #internationalist and #Labour movement perspectiv… 1 month ago
  • RT @OrganiseLondon: This is how families at Clyde House in Putney are being treated by @A2DominionGroup. They've come together to organise… 1 month ago
  • RT @humanite_fr: Plus de 2000 personnes à la halle Dufriche ce soir en #SoutienHumanite et plus de un million d'euros récoltés pour la sous… 1 month ago
  • RT @SweeneySteve: Union Nacional de Mujeres of Venezuela defending the Bolivarian Revolution and vowing to oppose imperialist intervention… 1 month ago
Follow @tomgilltweets

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow Revolting Europe on WordPress.com

Top Clicks

  • humaniteinenglish.com/spi…

Subjects

Meta

THE EURO

The Dossier

FRANCE

GERMANY

GREECE

ITALY

PORTUGAL

SPAIN