The labor reform agreed by the Government, CEOE, Cepyme, UGT and CC OO in 2021 introduced significant changes to the training contract: it reduced the type from three to two, limited them to people up to 30 years of age and redefined the maximum limits of the working day, among other changes. All this was reflected in the Workers’ Statute, but there were some details left open and left at risk of future regulatory developments. Four years later, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, announced that the Council of Ministers this Tuesday will approve these changes through a royal decree.
Among the main innovations, the limit on the maximum number of training contracts that can be stipulated in a work center depending on its size stands out. In companies with up to ten employees the limit will be three contracts of this type (i.e. the staff will be able to have a maximum of 13 people with the three training contracts) and in no company, of any size, will it exceed thirty.
“Tomorrow we will approve in the Council of Ministers another of the provisions that the labor reform has imposed on us, namely the regulatory development of article 11 of training contracts, provided for by the Workers’ Statute,” Díaz said on Monday at an event in Madrid. “With this new royal decree we will guarantee training contracts that effectively have full employment rights, in terms of remuneration, minimum wage and working hours,” he added. As this is a regulatory development, it does not require parliamentary validation, so it does not face a possible failure like the one that derailed the reduction in working hours.
As established in the text submitted for hearing and public information in 2023, work centers with up to ten people will be able to have three training contracts. The reference in the text to the “work center” and not to the “company” is intended to ensure that this limit is not diluted in companies with multiple dispersed employees.
In workplaces with 11 to 31 employees (always excluding workers in training from the calculation), the limit is seven training contracts; 31 to 50 workers, in a dozen contracts; and with more than fifty employees, 20% of the total workforce with a maximum of 30 contracts. At the same time, the text specifies that people with disabilities hired through training contracts “will not be counted towards the maximum number”.
“Every person with a part-time or fixed-term contract will be counted as an additional worker”, we read in the decree proposed by Labour, which at the same time specifies that these limits may be modified or replaced with percentages through sector collective agreements. These maximum limits are a novelty that is not contemplated in the current decree that regulates training contracts, a rule that dates back to 1998. Díaz opted for a “proximity” between the development of training and the productive fabric of the territory, to achieve “greater success” in employability.
The second vice president announced this on Monday in Madrid, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Laboratory Schools. “In these 40 years of professional practice of the Workshop Schools we have developed more than 30,000 training projects alternating with employment and they have benefited more than 1.2 million people. The figures are cold and cold, but they are very important,” said Díaz.
(New in development. There will be an extension soon.)
