The dismissals in collective processes in Catalonia until October of the year exceed the figure that was registered in 2023 with two months left until the end of the year. The Department of Labor recorded 5,689 dismissals in employment regulation files (ERE), 36% more.
CC.OO sources. They said that these bad data may be a first reflection of the slowdown in the economy that they have been noticing for a few weeks. This year there is a differentiating element compared to previous years and it is the impact of employment adjustments in technology companies such as Facebook subcontractors, Glovo, Wallbox and Tripadvisor. In fact, for yet another month, the information technology services (ICT) sector is the one with the most layoffs: a total of 761 people, 13% of the total. The crisis in this sector is not a process that occurs exclusively in Catalonia, since it has a global effect.
Sources from the Department of Labor said that the specific data for October are similar to those of the same month of the previous year. What is growing are the figures for the year as a whole, which are influenced by a couple of large processes that affected a significant number of workers, such as the ERE of Barcelona CCC Digital Services, with more than 330 affected.
The number of layoffs is expected to continue growing given the constant drip of ERE that does not seem to stop. This same week, the energy company Holaluz announced the cut of one in four jobs on the staff. In total there will be 200.
The unions rule out that the layoffs are due to the labor reform, which has increased the number of workers with indefinite contracts. In a recent study, the Catalan employers’ association Foment stated that 70% of new permanent contracts had a duration of less than one year.
The number of dismissals due to ERE in Catalonia in the first nine months of the year is also higher than the annual figure between 2014 and 2018. 2011 was the year with the most job losses, coinciding with the end of the hardest part of the pandemic, which caused some temporary files to end in layoffs.
Just as happened in previous months, those affected by suspension and reduction of working hours have decreased. In both cases, the improvement is due to the normalization of supply chains, which caused fewer factory stoppages. Data from the Department of Teball show that in the first nine months of the year there were more than 23,000 workers affected by a suspension of contracts. It is less than half of those that occurred in the first ten months of 2022. Something similar happened with those affected by reductions in working hours, which fell to just under 2,000 from 4,364 a year before.
