Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2012 as news of the Rajoy government’s plan against employment fraud, including about 25 inspectors and 30 sub-inspectors and up to a hundred new hires. The measures and figures belong to that moment.
Mariano Rajoy is announcing cuts at every Council of Ministers meeting of his term. It’s frightening! He keeps on cutting and taking such tough measures on ordinary people’s finances, and so far their consequences haven’t translated into positive results.
Despite these cuts, he also wants to take steps to fight employment fraud against the Social Security system, checking that the people working at each workplace are properly registered with the national Social Security system. One of the measures expected is a large-scale wave of inspections at companies suspected of fraud.
And he wants to do it by creating jobs: up to a hundred new people could be hired for this work. Initially, around 25 inspectors and 30 sub-inspectors will be in charge of carrying out these company visits, intensively and extensively.
What measures does the government want to introduce?
The government intends to take four key measures, aimed at employers on the one hand and at workers on the other.
The main lines of action regarding employers are:
- Stopping companies from having active employees who aren’t paying Social Security contributions, and
- The use of foreign workers without the proper paperwork.
For workers, it also aims to take measures to stamp out bad practices, such as monitoring:
- People who are working while collecting unemployment benefit, and
- Improper access to unemployment benefits.
Control and cooperation
The first step will be a social awareness campaign to get the social partners (unions and employers’ organizations) involved in raising awareness of employment fraud.
Through the State Public Employment Service, the government aims to check that unemployed people actually show up at the employment offices, verifying the commitments that come with receiving unemployment benefit.
It also plans to legislate for greater and more effective inspection work and handling of open administrative proceedings, looking for fraud of every kind, including possible shell companies and fraudulent hiring or registrations in the system.
These plans won’t work without cooperation between different public bodies, such as the Tax Agency, the General Treasury of the Social Security and the National Social Security Institute, not to mention the regional governments, which are responsible for employment.
The measures as seen by the unions
At first glance, treating the unemployed as potential fraudsters doesn’t go down well with the main trade unions, which have stated in writing that rejected unemployment claims account for only 0.023% of the total.
Featured image: Zarateman, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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