Social Security is carrying out a massive campaign of inspections in the real estate sector to regularize false self-employed workers: thousands of workers who, like 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 been generalized to the entire state and have begun to reach companies. million-dollar sanctions, which in many cases will lead to closure. “The inspection draws up minutes and is choosing to request the employment of all self-employed workers: it forces the company to pay social contributions for the last four years in addition to the sanctions. “Figures that in many cases are unaffordable.”
Spokespersons for the Inspection of the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy ruled out that the real estate sector is a specific objective 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 controls are intensified in other similar companies.” The ministry spokespersons recalled that the employer must “catch up and pay contributions for the last four years so that workers can recover, for example, the right to unemployment.”
Real estate agents have traditionally been agency employees, but in recent years large international firms and franchises have grown by incorporating agents with commercial contracts. Among the companies that have chosen this route are some of the largest in the sector, such as Engel
“In some cases they are effectively commercial relationships, but in others they had all the characteristics of an employment relationship,” Junyent acknowledges. One of the inspection minutes indicated, for example, that the agents had their own desk in the office, schedule, distribution of work in teams, vacation shifts and company telephone and computer. This act was appealed before the courts, which endorsed the inspection’s criteria.
In other cases, points out the president of Fadei, the courts have rejected the inspection’s resolutions, which in her opinion become “arbitrary.” For example, in the case of agents who carry out other activities in addition to agency, and who have organizational freedom. “In our sector we are not talking about riders – remembers Junyent. These are people who often have very high incomes and many of them do not want to enter into an employment relationship at all.” In her opinion, the case of false self-employed workers is different and the agencies that use them “are unfairly competing with real estate agencies that do comply with labor legislation.”
Fadei, in collaboration with Pimec and Conpymes, and the general council of the API colleges have prepared a guide to guide real estate companies and are scheduling information meetings with the sector to help them face inspections, regularizing workers or changing their organization internally so that its 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 per year in commissions, and “they want to work as they wish, without having to work.”