When things do not go well in a company, there is a word that scares especially in the templates: Ere. In 2024, about 189,200 workers were affected by regulation files, 4.5% more than a year earlier. The bulk of the settings were made through ERTE, which affected 151,800 people, while another 37,400 were included in collective dismissals. The Dana catastrophe, at the end of the year, has also been mainly channeled through ERTE, reinforced in the labor reform with the support of unions and employers.
The ERT brought together the bulk of the people affected by regulation files and also concentrated the greatest increase in the adjustments made in the last year. Thus, ERTE workers increased 5% compared to 2023, while people included in collective dismissals increased 2.4%.
Among the ERTE, for the vast majority of affected people, they suppose the suspension of their contracts (143,000), to which a much smaller number of ERTE are added with reduction of the day (8,700 people).
Remember that these data correspond to a growing labor market in recent years. In 2024, Spain reached the historical record of 21.8 million people working after the creation of 468,100 jobs.
Raúl Olmos, with a union action of CCOO, highlights that the employment regulation statistics reflects “very good data”, almost the same as in 2023, with less employment push and also having to face the DANA catastrophe at the end of the year. “If we removed the effect of the Dana, I think the data would have been even a little lower than those of 2023,” Value Fernando Luján, Deputy Secretary General of UGT union policy.
“Fortunately, the labor market is pulling very well,” consulted sources of the Employers CEOE also recognize, which highlight that collective layoff figures remain “very small.”
Unions and employers warn that this employment regulation statistics, and especially when collective layoff data are low as now, the particular circumstances of a single file of a certain relevance – like that of some 3,400 people from telephone last year – have a lot of influence on the final image. Thus, they can cause important oscillations in the percentage data, which are not always so relevant with the wide look to the entire labor market.
The “success” in the pandemic and the impulse of labor reform
Although ERTE met massively during the pandemic, they already existed as a tool in labor legislation and concentrated a large part of the adjustments that were made in the companies. However, as the previous graph reflects, in recent years its use has extended even more and brings together a higher percentage of the total adjustments that are carried out in the labor market.
The experience of the COVID popularized this instrument much more, also among small businesses. But the “great success” of the ERTE was also key, as the OECD described, since they were not only used in the emergency by the Coronavirus, but then they did not make ere massively, protecting hundreds of thousands of jobs and an important part of the Spanish productive fabric.
“From the pandemic the ERTE space has opened a lot in the face of collective dismissal. This has to do with the good economic and employment situation, as well as that the focus of the pandemic, when it was seen as a possible tool to protect activity and employment. He helped see the ERT as a reference because it worked, ”argues Raúl Olmos (CCOO).
And that focus was later accompanied by its normative impulse through the labor reform, agreed with the majority unions and the employers. The existing ERTEs (by force majeure and for objective causes, called ETOP) were encouraged and the new modality of the network mechanism was created, for future cyclic and sectoral crises.
“These data are one more show that the impulse to these temporary regulation files that we agreed in the Labor Reform of 2021 was adequate,” says Fernando Luján (UGT), which considers that ERTE’s rise on collective layoffs is Another face of the “success” of labor reform, less known than the collapse of temporality, but also of great relevance.
At the sector level, the one that has attended the employment regulation tools is the automobile industry, which is facing a transformation with the boom of the electric vehicle, among other challenges. At the end of the year, the Government approved in particular for this sector a specific network mechanism, which the Ministry of Labor raised in the face of the demands of the unions, especially to protect the jobs of the Ford of Almussafes in the Valencian Community.
In the employer they also share as “very good news” the increase in “internal flexibility” against contract extinctions, a measure that highlights that the CEOE agreed in the labor reform. At present, in the business organization they respond that they do not have a special concern for any economic sector, given “the good progress” of the labor market. Of course, on the horizon they recognize that they are pending the tariffs that are announced.
Protector to the Dana catastrophe
Another of the samples of the greatest use of the ERTE has been the catastrophe for the Dana, especially in the Valencian Community, although also in some locations in Castilla-La Mancha, such as Letur.
The bulk of the impact on the use of catastrophe has been channeled for the moment through the ERTE. According to data from the Ministry of Labor, 31,442 workers were affected by ERTE by the DANA (30,622 contract suspensions and 820 day reductions), “all of them due to force majeure.”
In the unions they point out that they are aware that some businesses may not reopen due to the devastation of the Dana, but underline the relevance that ERTE acts as a containment of the massive destruction of employment as the first response to a crisis. “We also saw it with the ERTE DE LA PALMA and the use of the ERTE during the problems by the supplies chains,” says Fernando Luján.
Waiting for the definitive evidence, how the labor market and ERTE behave in a future economic crisis of draft, unions and employers celebrate these first signs of success of the agreed measures. “In addition, without the adjustment mechanism that the temporary contracts supposed before and that no longer exists,” says Raúl Olmos.
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