They are more than half of those reviewed in a crash plan that has also made 1,631 temporary contracts stable
The Labor Inspectorate managed to convert 245 discontinuous permanent contracts into indefinite ones in Gipuzkoa last year, more than half of those reviewed, since a total of 456 were analyzed, within the Shock Plan against fraud in contracting launched in the whole Basque Country.
According to data released yesterday by the Labor Department, in May it sent letters to 133 companies in the territory that, according to the anti-fraud tool, could be in an irregular situation. The Department headed by Vicelehendakari Idoia Mendia clarifies that these are contracts entered into prior to the entry into force of the labor reform but that they had to adapt to it.
Although the Labor Inspectorate has been periodically carrying out various campaigns against fraud in temporary hiring since 2018, last year it also included in its shock plan the discontinuous permanent contracts entered into prior to the labor reform of December 28, 2021. He explains that although this modality has not had a particular prevalence in the Basque Country, a total of 328 letters were sent throughout the Basque Country to companies that affected 974 workers, of whom 494 have been transformed into ordinary permanent, 50.72% of the total.
The largest number were regularized in Gipuzkoa (245), followed by Bizkaia, with 232 contracts converted into permanent contracts out of a total of 453 reviewed, while in Araba 17 out of 65 analyzed were converted.
The letters sent in May referred to alleged temporary contracts that exceeded the maximum authorized periods, the concatenation of temporary contracts, as well as irregularities in the use of the discontinuous permanent contract. This campaign was intended to adapt these contracts to the labor reform that came into force on March 30, 2022.
For its part, in June another shipment was sent in which the evolution of employment was analyzed in certain companies in which it was detected that they could be covering permanent or structural staff jobs with temporary contracts. To detect these possible irregularities, the Department of Labor has used big data technology. In this case, 10,415 possible irregular temporary contracts were detected in the Basque Country in 4,515 companies. The campaign made it possible to regularize 5,239 contracts, 50.3% of those reviewed.
significant decline
In Gipuzkoa, 1,631 contracts were converted out of a total of 3,166 reviewed after sending letters to 1,351 companies. In Bizkaia, 2,878 contracts of the 5,913 analyzed were regularized and in Araba 730 of the 1,336 reviewed. Once the letters have been sent, the Labor Inspectorate gives companies a period of one month to voluntarily correct the irregularity before starting the corresponding action.
The sectors with the highest number of conversions have been the manufacturing industry, education, administrative and auxiliary activities, health and social services, commerce and hospitality.
In 2022, half the contracts have been reviewed than in 2021 (22,852) and almost a third of those from a year earlier (14,152) have been regularized. This is due, according to the Department of Labor, to the fact that “the activity of the Inspection has caused the number of irregularities to be less.”