The Scholarship Statute, promised by Sánchez at his inauguration in 2018, is forgotten

Precariousness is the word that usually accompanies the intern in Spain. That young man (usually) who has not yet finished his degree or his Vocational Training module or who has already graduated but has not yet found a solid job and who takes his first steps in a company, very often without having an assigned salary. They should be in training, but in practice many times they carry out the same tasks as any other worker, without being recognized as such.

Putting an end to this bleak start to working life is something that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, had proposed, who already promised in 2018, specifically on July 17, a month and a half after being sworn in as president after the success of the motion of no confidence in Mariano Rajoy, that he would approve a Statute for the Scholar to dignify them. Six years ago then, the 2012 labor reform had been approved, which gave wings to the flexibility (and precariousness) of many of these labor relations.

“We have lost hundreds of thousands [of young people] who today develop their careers outside our country and many others who, when they have rejoined the labor market in our country, have done so in undignified conditions that have nothing to do with the training they had completed.. In the coming months, the Government will implement a shock plan to create youth employment, in which relief and internship contracts will be reviewed and promoted, new instruments of active employment policies for young people will be put in place, a new regulation of labor internships and scholarship programs will be developed, the Scholarship Statute will be created and extracurricular internships will be eliminated,” Sánchez promised in Congress, unleashing applause from his bench.

The promise was not fulfilled in that first year, so when he was sworn in as president of the Coalition Government with Unidas Podemos on January 4, 2020, he revalidated it during his inauguration speech: “We have to move forward, together with the social agents, in the elaboration of a new Workers' Statute that takes into account the new labor realities and faces the challenges of employment in the 21st century.. And, together with this, the social dialogue must address many tasks, and as an example I will give some: the simplification and rearrangement of the menu of work contracts, reinforcing the causality in dismissals, the elimination of changes that facilitate, for example, dismissal due to justified absenteeism -as the unions are asking us-, the recovery of labor rights in the processes of substantial modification of working conditions, as well as the review of training contracts, including the approval and development of the Statute of the Scholarship Holder. “.

The Workers' Statute of the 21st century never saw the light of day, neither has the causality of the dismissals been reinforced nor has the Scholarship Statute gone ahead, despite the fact that the Ministry of Labor of Yolanda Díaz has negotiated it in the social dialogue during the last year, reaching an agreement in extremis last month with the union, but with the opposition of the CEOE and, most decisively, the university community.

The Crue Spanish Universities Association, made up of 76 universities -50 public and 26 private-, has been against it throughout the negotiation process, considering the Statute “a threat to the current internship model” and considering that academic internships must be regulated by the academic world (the Ministry of University and the universities themselves) and not by the social agents or the Ministry of Labor.

deferred rights

Even so, Yolanda Díaz, Pepe Álvarez, general secretary of the UGT, and Unai Sordo, his CCOO counterpart, summoned all the press to present the agreement they had reached at the ministerial headquarters: curricular practices could not exceed more than 25% of the training hours; the extracurricular ones -those that are carried out without computing in credits- would be limited to 15% of the training hours with a maximum of 480 hours per course-; the companies would be obliged to compensate the expenses for doing the internships (transport, accommodation or maintenance, for example, unless they are covered by other aid); the interns could not work shifts or work at night -unless it is essential due to the nature of the work-; companies could not have a number of scholarship holders greater than 20% of the total workforce, but all could have up to two scholarship holders; and each tutor could not be in charge of more than five fellows.

These measures, even though they were agreed between the Ministry of Labor and the unions, have not seen the light of day, since the socialist part of the Government has not supported them in the face of opposition from the university community.. In the event that the Executive had approved the rule in one of the last Councils of Ministers, it was not guaranteed the parliamentary support of the Permanent Commission of Congress either..

In addition to keeping this rule in the drawer, until there is “a broad agreement” with the social agents, as the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños admitted, the Government has also reversed a measure that was already approved and that will now be postponed: the contribution to the Social Security of the scholarship holders. Last year, as part of the pension reform, the Executive approved that the scholarship holders would begin to contribute to Social Security -with a state bonus for companies of 95% of the quota- as of this month of October, but finally this obligation will not apply until January 1, 2024.