28.7% of all contracts sealed in August, practically one in three, were part-time, a contractual modality signed mostly by women, according to data from the State Public Employment Service (SEPE). Of the 1,088,831 contracts that month, 312,366 were part-time, and 190,662, 60%, were signed by women, explains the SEPE. Along with these part-time contracts, in August 623,970 full-time contracts were signed, 57.3% of the total, while the rest, 152,495, 14% of the total, were permanent discontinuous contracts.
Men accounted for 60% of all full-time contracts and 62% of all discontinuous permanent contracts. Looking at the type of contract, among the initial 387,673 permanent contracts signed that month, 39.2% were full-time (152,189); 38.6%, permanent discontinuous (149,044), and 22.2% (86,440), part-time. Women only signed 48,914 full-time permanent contracts, barely a third of the total.
In the most numerous type of temporary employment, that of production circumstances, 65.4% were full-time (341,550), and 34.6% were part-time (180,211). They also kept most of the temporary part-time contracts, a situation that repeats itself every month. “The labor reform has significantly corrected (…) the use and abuse of temporary contracts. However, part of the misunderstood flexibility in hiring is channeled through part-time hiring,” they noted this week from CCOO that has proposed a reform of this modality.
In Spain, CCOO explained, it is usually an unwanted part-time job (more hours are not worked because the company does not offer more work hours), feminized, and which in some sectors hides fraudulent practices of irregular extension of the working day. “More than 2 million women were working part-time during the second quarter of 2023 and, of them, half would want to work full-time, but they are not offered this type of working day,” the UGT noted in its analysis of the results. Latest data from the Active Population Survey (EPA).
Part-time contracts, the union detailed, are concentrated on domestic workers, administrative activities, and commerce mainly, jobs that are poorly valued and, consequently, poorly paid. Measures against unwanted bias
Among CCOO’s proposals in this situation would be the transformation of part-time contracts into full-time contracts when the sum of ordinary hours plus complementary hours reaches a certain percentage, for example 80%, or establishing additional remuneration for complementary hours. for the greater flexibility they give to the company.
UGT has also raised other proposals such as introducing an additional percentage increase in the SMI for those people with a part-time contract. “There are fewer and fewer full-time hires. And, therefore, we are not facing full salaries either,” USO questioned in a recent statement where they pointed out that a discontinuous permanent contract, a modality that has multiplied after the labor reform, It is also a contract that works less than a full day, either on an annual or monthly basis.
“It is not enough to have indefinite contracts to maintain the system. These, in addition to having to be indefinite in practice, must involve more full days and, therefore, better remunerated,” they claimed.
