“The Great Resignation is a phenomenon that has never been seen in our country.” This was one the major shared conclusions from the meeting that Joaquin Perez Rey (Secretary of State for Employment) held with social agents on Monday to address more than 109,000 job vacancies in Spain. According to data INE officials,
Perez Rey passively and actively rejected the notion that there is a “similar phenomenon” in Spain to that seen in the United States, where over four million people have left their jobs. He did not admit that there was a widespread shortage of workers in any sector of Spain’s economy. Yolanda Diaz, the Minister in charge of Yolanda’s Ministry, only acknowledges a “focused phenomenon” in certain sectors and territories of a shortage of workers it attributes to precarious work conditions.
In the absence of a detailed analysis by the employers and the unions in the weeks ahead, the vacancies were given a surname and a name at the Monday meeting. They focus on “sectors of the greatest technical complexity”, including information technology, cloud computing and system analysis. Artificial intelligence is also included. According to the secretary, it is necessary to requalify workers. The CCOO says that this is not necessary for the current deficit but to ensure that it doesn’t become a structural problem in future.
However, there are also “specific problems and very concentrated by territories” in the primary sector, construction, hotel industry, and transport. UGT says that these areas are restricted to four autonomous communities, Madrid, Catalonia Valencia, Andalusia and Valencia. Perez Rey cautioned that it was impossible to speak of “a generalized shortage of vacancies”. He cited the example of the hotel industry, which only 4% of all unfilled positions. This is “a very small number”.
Yolanda Diaz’s second-in-command didn’t hesitate to blame low wages and precarious working conditions as the cause of this deficit. Professor also said that it is not about a lack of will to work, but that the conditions are not sufficient to live in these areas. She also condemned the fact that some hospitality agreements pay less than the minimum wage while the average rent in these towns can exceed 1,400 euros per monthly. He reiterated that they don’t pay enough or have the right conditions to be able to get these jobs.
He listed the following: minimum wages, even below SMI, absence of permits, weekend break, exhausting working hours, and other factors that make it difficult to reconcile work and personal life. The Secretary of State stated that there is an easy solution to this problem: Pay correctly, follow the working hours, and allow for personal and work life to be reconciled.
