The Social Security is carrying out a massive campaign of inspections in the real estate sector to regularize the false self-employed: thousands of workers who, like the riders, have a commercial relationship with the company despite having complete organizational dependence on the firm.
Montserrat Junyent, president of Fadei, the Federation of Real Estate Business Associations, explains that the first inspections began two years ago in the Valencian Community, but in recent months they have spread throughout the State and have begun to hit the companies with millions of fines, which in many cases will force them to close. “The inspection draws up minutes and is choosing to request the employment of all the self-employed: it forces the company to pay the social contributions of the last four years in addition to the penalties. Figures that in many cases are unsustainable”.
Some spokespeople for the inspection of the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy ruled out that the real estate sector is a specific target of the inspection. However, they explain, “we use artificial intelligence technology to identify which sectors the companies in which fraud is detected belong to, and thus intensify controls in other similar companies. The spokespersons of the ministry reminded that the employer must “catch up and pay the contributions of the last four years so that the workers recover, for example, the right to unemployment”.
Real estate agents have traditionally been salaried agencies, but in recent years large international firms and franchises have grown by incorporating agents with commercial contracts. Among the companies that have opted for this route are some of the biggest in the sector, such as Engel
“In some cases they are indeed commercial relationships, but in others they had all the characteristics of an employment relationship”, acknowledges Junyent. One of the inspection reports indicated, for example, that the agents had their own desk in the office, timetable, division of work into teams, holiday shifts and the company’s telephone and computer. This act was appealed to the courts, which endorsed the inspection criteria.
In other cases, the president of Fadei points out, the courts have rejected the resolutions of the inspection, which in her opinion are “arbitrary”. For example, in the case of agents who carry out other activities in addition to the agency, and who have organizational freedom. “In our sector we are not talking about riders – remembers Junyent-. They are people who often have very high incomes and many of them do not want to enter into a working relationship at all”. In his opinion, the case of fake self-employed persons is different and the agencies that use them “are unfair competition to real estate companies that do comply with labor legislation”
Fadei, in collaboration with Pimec and Conpymes, and the general council of the API colleges have drawn up a guide to guide real estate companies and are scheduling informative meetings with the sector to help them face the inspections, regularizing workers or by changing their internal organization so that their agents are truly autonomous.
Joan-Galo Macià, president of Engel
In his opinion, the commercial relationship attracts “a more entrepreneurial agent profile: professionals who in many cases had their own agency and have closed it to work under the umbrella of a big brand like ours”. Macià points out that some agents earn more than 100,000 euros a year in commissions, and “they want to work in their own way, without becoming a laborer”.
