2023-11-04 07:30:03
More than 10,000 people from Girona work without being registered. If you compare the data from the latest Active Population Survey, which counted 377,600 employed in the province in the third quarter, with those with average affiliation to Social Security in September -nearly 364,000-, the result is that around 13,000 people from Girona worked without contract or without their corresponding self-employment registration. It is a figure that has kept us stable in recent years and that places between 5% and 10% the volume of workers who work in the underground economy.
Although the figure cannot be taken literally due to the different methodology used – for example, the EPA collects the situation of the employed by their place of residence and the affiliation reflects where they are employed -, the experts agree that the difference between both indicators reflects quite roughly the volume of irregular employment.
Girona’s data are a long way from provinces such as Alicante, which leads the Spanish ranking with 140,000 employed people who do not appear in the Social Security affiliation bases; Valencia, with 105,000; Las Palmas, with 59,370; Balearic Islands, with 58,710; Toledo, with 58,450; Cadiz, with 52,600; and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, with 52,050.
It is in all cases demarcations with great weight of tourism and also construction, two sectors where traditionally more informal economy has been detected, together with agriculture
Even so, it must be remembered that there are many other activities where the burden of irregular employment is very high throughout the country, such as classes particulars, domestic employment or the caregivers.
“Behind a worker without a contract there is a pirate entrepreneur who takes advantage of it”, warns Maxi Rica (UGT-Girona)
For the professor of the Department of Applied Economics of the UA and expert in the labor market Hipólito Simón, the data could also be interpreted as “the reaction of certain employers to the corsets that derive from the labor reform in relation to the use mandatory by default of the indefinite contract”.
The general secretary of the UGT in Girona recalls that “behind a person working without a contract, there is a pirate businessman who wants to take advantage of the vulnerable situation to make private profit”. In this sense, he regrets that employers complain on the one hand that they find professionals, but on the other hand some of them “devalue the labor market by taking advantage of people without contracts and worse working conditions”.
The Girona job market is cooling down
In the same vein, the general secretary of CCOO in Girona, Belen Lopez, transfers “all the responsibility to the companies, which are the ones that must register with the public social security system and the contributions to all workers”. However, it admits the existence of irregular work, “mostly migrants, in an irregular situation” and in sectors such as hospitality and agriculture. “The Labor Inspectorate should take more proactive actions to detect these groups of workers who are in an irregular situation”, he added.
Collect part of the salary “in B”
A recent report by Infojobs on irregular work points out that 11% of Spanish workers say that it is common to “collect a B part” of their salary. The study adds that the majority of workers who are paid in black are young people under 24 years of age, and that the autonomous community where the most are paid in “B” is Andalusia.
“It is very likely that the economic situation of the last year, characterized by inflation and the loss of purchasing power, has accentuated this practice”, points out Mónica Pérez, director of communication and studies at Infojobs.
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