All companies for one year 50 or more workers Must be registered equality plan before the labor authority. It is an inevitable requirement that most companies do not comply with, according to constant complaints from unions. And liabilities in terms of parity are increasing for companies and job inspection It has determined adapting to these among its priorities.
So much so that the ‘labor police’ has eightfolded the amount of sanctions it has imposed on companies over the past year for violating the principles of equality regulations. So, since it doesn’t have a counter protocol sexual harassment at work, to receive job offers sexist or because you have one wage range more than 25% unfair; among others. To reduce the overall inequality that women continue to be exposed to in the labor market. In absolute terms, a woman 20.6% less More than one man in Catalonia, according to the latest data from the Generalitat.
According to the data provided by the Ministry of Labour, to the questions of EL PERIÓDICO from the Prensa Ibérica group, in 2022 the total number of ‘labour police’ officers 4,788 performances throughout Spain with regard to parity-related issues. Of these, one in four companies failed the investigators’ review and was recorded with a breach. For the sum of all, the Worker has imposed sanctions for its total value. €2.58 million.
And it ranges from fines for missing an equity plan. From 751 to 7,500 Eurosthough they may rise, 225.000 € its absence is due to a clear desire to conceal gender-based discrimination.
Inspection priority
The total amount of sanctions skyrocketed in 2022, coinciding with the first year that the regulation was fully enacted, which obliges all companies with more than 50 employees to have an equity plan. The amount of sanctions was eight times greater than that imposed in 2021 (324,771 €), about half of the performances.
As explained by the Minister of Labor of the Generalitat de Catalunya, enric vinaixaThe equity plan and any protocols it includes are the first thing an inspector wants when they appear at a company, along with an occupational risk prevention plan or record of working hours.
One of the most common mistakes that the labor authority detects and causes one of the two equality schemes offered by companies to be rejected is that they have not been negotiated with the union. “Given that one of the parties has no legitimacy, we cannot accept all plans,” says Vinaixa.
And, by agreement of all parties, the main problem with the implementation of this regulation is that, as with many companies, a company has not established a legal representation of workers. SMEs, the most representative unions are those that must send a delegation to negotiate the equality plan. Centers declare they are overwhelmed, and companies complain that delegations are foreign personnel and do not understand the internal dynamics of the center they are supposed to diagnose.
Companies complain about bureaucracy
“Everything in this country is always expected at the last minute. There are repeated violations of the regulations, and we know that since 2007 there are already large companies that have had to have an equity plan and have not started negotiating it until the last minute”, CCOO de Catalunya this week denounced the woman and LGTBI + secretary of Mentsu Guiterrezat a press conference. According to data collected by the centre, only 14% of Catalan companies registered an equity plan in 2022.
“We’ve made progress despite low registration data,” admits Pimec employer’s head of collective bargaining. Ariadna Guixe. “This is a poorly conceived norm, not for the reality of the majority of our productive fabric, which is SMEs, but from the perspective of large companies that already have union representation,” he adds.
They argue from the business entity that the registration of the equity scheme ‘in itself’ does not provide real value and represents only one. bureaucracycenters respond that without this formalism there will be no real possibility of checking whether regulations are being complied with and that companies must take action to identify and correct existing inequalities in terms of parity.
The absence of an equity scheme is not only subject to a sanction for the company by the Labor Inspectorate, but also vetoes the company’s access to certain public subsidies, such as hiring incentives. The risk that administrations see is realized through the assessment of psychosocial risks as well as equity plans. An obligation to identify if there are elements in the workplace that contribute to employee fatigue or stress, among others, that companies have been formally required to comply with since 1995, and few of them have to comply.